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Bequest  of 

Frederic  Bancroft 

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g  1832  '■§£) 


Til OY  GOiXIivRJi^Wi 


E  MI-CENTENNIAL. 


Q^1882 


First  Half  Century 


LIFE  AND  WORK 


TROY  CONFERENCE 


Methodist  Episcopal  Church. 


BY    ERASTUS   WENTWORTH, 

MEMBER  OK   THE  CONFERENCE  IN  ITS  FIRST  AND  LAST  TWO  DECAD1  3. 


TROY,  N.  V.: 

PRINTED   AT   THE   T:MEC    OKnCK,    ,{K«  >.\  i  ►  "\  V.Y    AM'    IHIK1>    STREET. 

'■  .'.•-     ;'ss.>.  -  •    ■ 


Text  : — "  What  mean  these  stones  ?' 


i  •  •  •     • »  •    • 

•  •   •  •  •  t« 

•  •   .  <    •  • » • 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL 


The  general-in-chief  of  the  Israelitish  forces, 
and  leader  of  a  great  national  migration,  only 
obeyed  a  common  human  impulse  when  he  com- 
manded twelve  stones  to  be  taken  from  the  bed 
of  the  divided  Jordan  and  piled  in  Gilgal  as  a 
lasting  memorial  of  a  signal  event  in  the  nation's 
history. 

The  monumental  instinct  is  universal.  All 
ages  and  lands  have  their  rude  or  labored  me- 
mentoes of  past  events  and  times  gone  by.  The 
graceful  pagodas,  rising  story  above  story,  a 
cpnspicuous  feature  of  the  Chinese  landscape, 
are  venerable  commemoratives.  So  are  the  Dru- 
idic  monoliths  of  Salisbury  plain  and  the  rock- 
wonders  of  Luxor,  Karnak  and  Elephanta.  Amid 
the  silences  of  Persepolis  and  Palmyra ;  the 
Sphinxes  and  pyramids  of  Egypt ;  the  winged 
bulls  of  Nineveh  ;  the  ruined  arches  and  temples 
of  Rome  and  Carthage  ;  the  tombs  of  Athens 
and  Cyprus  ;  successive  generations  of  explorers 
— Layards,  Belzonis,  Champollions,  Schliemans 
and  Cesnolas  pause  and  inquire,  "what  mean 
these  stones." 

Youngest  in  the  family  of  nations,  America 
already  chronicles  her  Bunker  Hill  and  Gettys- 
burgh  achievements  in  marble  shafts  and  granite 


4  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

obelisks.     Yet,  there  are  better  and  more  endur- 
ing preservatives  than  these. 

Historical  happenings,  luckily,  are  independent 
of  rocks  and  stones  which  the  rains  abrade,  light-, 
nings  and  earthquakes  shatter,  and  sands  bury. 
Oral  traditions,  written   records,  ballads,    epics, 
are  better  custodians. 

The  pen  erects  monuments  more  durable  than 
brass.  Customs,  and  public  periodical  observ- 
ances, especially  those  of  celebrative  character, 
are  more  instructive  to  new  generations  than 
monumental  piles.  Passover  and  Purim  were 
more  educative  to  the  young  Jew  than  Gilgal 
stone  heaps ;  the  semi-centennial  jubilee  vastly 
more  striking  than  the  weekly  Sabbath. 

The  fiftieth  anniversary  of  marriage  is  so  much 
more  notable  than  the  original  wedding  as  to  be 
fitly  styled  " golden."  Centennials  and  semi- 
centennials are  marked  periods  in  history. 
American  Methodism,  like  the  American  nation, 
has  already  celebrated  its  hundredth  birth-day. 
The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  will,  two  years 
hence,  honor  the  historical  Christmas  that  made 
it  an  independent  organization. 

Fifty  years  ago,  the  Troy  Conference,  a  sub- 
section of  that  church,  came  into  being,  and  we 
are  here  to  offer  due  respect  to  the  occasion,  to 
connect  by  living  links  1882  with  1832;  and  to 
send,  by  living  messengers,  brotherly  greetings 
to  the  conference  Centennial  session.  Some  on 
this  floor,  to-night,  will  survive  in  1932. 

In  1828,  I  heard  a  half-century  sermon  from 
my  own  old  Norwich,  Connecticut,  Puritan  pas- 


SEMI-CENTENNI.  1 1..  5 

tor,  Joseph  Strong,  J).  I).,  i  778-1834,  preceded 
by  Benjamin  Lord,  I).  I).,  171 7-1 784,  who, 
together  filled  out  the  long  period  of  one 
hundred  and  twenty  years  in  the  same  pul- 
pit. Naturally,  it  was  beyond  the  wildest  dream 
of  a  lad  of  fourteen,  that  he  would,  after  fifty- 
four  years,  be  the  chosen  mouth-piece  of  a  similar 
occasion.  Half  a  century  seemed  a  period  bor- 
dering on  the  patriarchal.  Yet,  the  years  have 
glided  away  so  swiftly  and  smoothly,  that,  to- 
night, he  stands  before  you,  facing  the  verge  of 
the  allotted  three  score  years  and  ten,  startled  to 
find  himself  so  near  the  goal,  but  feeling,  that, 
if  it  were  Heaven's  will,  he  could,  without  re- 
pining, live  out  another  period  of  equal  duration, 
and,  thoroughly  convinced,  from  his  own  experi- 
ence, that  if  Methuselah  had  been  asked  if  he 
could  endure  the  world's  wickedness  for  another 
nine  centuries,  he  would  have  answered  unhesi- 
tatingly that  he  had  "no  objection  to  trying." 

In  June,  1744,  Mr.  Wesley  convened,  in  Lon- 
don, his  first  ministerial  "conference,"  the  germ 
of  one  of  the  numerous  potential  agencies  of 
ecclesiastical  Methodism.  These  annual  minis- 
terial "  conversations "  have  traveled  over  the 
the  world  with  Methodism,  entered  into  all  its 
ramifications,  and  culminated,  in  1881,  in  an 
"ecumenical  conference"  at  City  Road  chapel, 
the  first  general  pilgrimage  to  the  shrine  of  the 
venerated  founder,  not  yet,  however,  whatever 
may  hap  in  the  future,  to  canonize  or  deify  him. 
This  harmless  gathering  threw  some  few  con- 
temporary church  idolizers  into  spasms  of  mirth 


6  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

or  throes  of  holy  horror  at  the  ridiculous  or  pro- 
fane association  of  the  sacred  name,  'ecumeni- 
cal," with  a  body  that  did  not  claim  to  be  a  synod 
or  council  of  clerics  and  bishops,  but  a  simple 
brotherly  "conference"  of  laics  and  preachers. 

The  first  American  Annual  Conference,  held 
in  Philadelphia,  in  1773,  under  the  chairmanship 
of  Thomas  Rankin,  one  of  Mr.  Wesley's  assist- 
ants, consisted,  like  Mr.  Wesley's  first  conference, 
of  ten  preachers, — all  English, — and  represented 
a  membership  of  11 60  and  a  chain  of  circuits 
along  the  Atlantic  seaboard  from  New  York  to 
Norfolk,  in  Virginia.  In  the  ten  years  follow- 
ing, notwithstanding  the  struggle  between  the 
colonies  and  the  mother  country,  a  conference 
session  was  held  every  year,  the  preachers  in- 
creased to  80,  the  circuits  to  40,  the  membership 
to  15,000. 

At  a  called  conference  commencing  with 
Christmas,  1784,  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church  of  the  United  States  of  North 
America  was  founded,  superintendents  were 
elected  and  made  presidents  ex  officio,  for  life. 
At  the  end  of  the  century,  sixteen  years  later, 
the  new  organization  numbered  270  itinerants, 
160  circuits,  stretching  from  Bay  Ouinte,  in  Can- 
ada, to  Augusta,  Georgia,  with  a  lay  membership 
of  60,000. 

A  single  conference,  meeting,  by  adjournment 
or  appointment,  at  widely  separated  points,  to 
accommodate  preachers  scattered  over  such 
breadth  of  territory,  was  no  longer  possible.  The 
number  of  sessions  had  increased  from  three  to 


SF.M  J-CENTENNIAL.  7 

twelve  and  twenty  a  year  when  the  General  Con- 
ference of  1796  distributed  the  circuits  among 
six  annual  conferences,  which  became  seven  in 
1800;  nine  in  1812;  twelve  in  1820.  As  the 
work  extended,  new  conferences  were  created  by 
annexing  newly-settled  territory,  or  by  sub-di- 
viding such  of  the  older  bodies  as  were  found  to 
be  too  unwieldy  or  wide  spread.  By  the  General 
Conference  of  1832,  the  northern  limb  of  the 
New  York  Conference,  which  stretched  from  the 
metropolitan  city  to  the  Canada  line,  something 
over  300  miles,  was  severed  from  the  parent  stock, 
named  Troy,  after  one  of  its  principal  cities,  and 
made  the  twenty-second  member  of  a  family  of 
annual  conferences,  that  now  number  96,  enrol 
1 2,00c  itinerants,  1,700,000  members  and  engir- 
dle the  globe.  The  Arminio-Wesleyan  phase  of 
Christianity  now  aggregates  between  twenty  and 
thirty  millions  of  adherents,  a  growth  that  has  had 
few  parallels,  notable  as  that  of  the  American 
nation  itself.  Success  is  not  an  infallible  measure 
of  merit.  Mere  numbers  are  no  test  of  worth, 
otherwise  we  must  award  approval,  divine  and 
human,  to  Mohammedanism,  Buddhism,  Mor- 
monism,  Spiritualism. 

Methodism  is  not  a  mushroom  growth.  Its 
doctrines  are  those  of  the  universal  church.  Its 
ground  principles  are  as  old  as  Christianity,  as 
lasting  as  the  true  interpretation  of  the  Book  of 
God.  It  is  no  other  than  Christianity  re-vitalized, 
shaken  free  from  dead  works  and  unprofitable 
traditions.  It  needs  no  apology  or  defence  in 
this  connection     The  Troy  Conference  is  sim- 


8  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

ply  a  sub-section  of  the  grand  body,  set  for  the 
propagation  and  maintenance  of  the  christian 
faith,  opposition  to  wrong  and  sin,  the  promotion 
of  pure  religion  and  right  living.  Territorially, 
it  included  ten  counties  and  parts  of  three  other 
counties  in  North-eastern  New  York,  the 
northern  half  of  Berkshire  county  in  Massachu- 
setts, and  that  part  of  Vermont  which  lay  west 
of  the  Green  mountains,  since  rent  away,  nay, 
rather,  wrenched  away  from  the  parent  trunk  by 
the  wretchedest  empiricism  ever  known  or  heard 
of  in  ecclesiastical  surgery. 

Pre-history  of  this  lake,  river,  mountain  and  val 
ley  region  is  not  needed  here.  In  1609,  Anglo- 
Dutch  Hendrick  Hudson,  called  at  the  south  door 
of  the  future  conference,  and  French  protestant 
Champlain  at  the  north,  and  each  left  his  card, 
to  be  read  of  all  generations,  the  one  in  our  chief 
lake,  the  other  in  our  principal  river.  French, 
English  and  Indians,  in  their  struggles  for  own- 
ership, made  this  whole  region  historic  battle- 
ground, suggestive,  at  every  turn,  of  defeat  or 
success,  from  burning  Schenectady  on  the  south, 
to  victorious  Plattsburgh  on  the  north,  especially 
reminding  us  of  the  shining  fact  that,  within  a 
dozen  miles  of  the  Mecca  of  American  Method- 
ism (the  Embury  monument)  was  fought  one  of 
the  "  fifteen  decisive  battles  of  the  world,"  and  a 
victory  gained  which  advanced  universal  freedom 
and  ranked  Saratoga  with  Marathon,  Arbela, 
Hastings,   Blenheim,    and  Waterloo. 

The   tide   of  emigration  which,   between    the 
French  war  and  the  Revolution,  swept  the   Em- 


SEMJ-CENTENN/A  L  9 

bury  family  to  the  north,  resumed  its  flow  with  the 
return  of  peace,  and  the  hardy  pilots  of  Methodism 
kept  their  rude,  life-preserving  craft  upon  the  crest 
of  the  advancing  wave.  Contemporaneously.with 
the  adoption  of  a  Republican  constitution  in 
place  of  a  rickety  confederation,  Garrettson  and 
his  heroic  band  found  their  way  to  the  log  set- 
tlements of  the  occupants  of  the  land-grants  cov- 
ering the  counties  bordering  Champlain  and  the 
upper  Hudson.  Cambridge,  the  home  of  pre- 
revolutionary  Methodism,  fittingly  became  the 
first  post-revolutionary  centre  from  which  evan- 
gelistic efforts  pulsated  throughout  all  that  north- 
ern region.  Albany.  Saratoga,  Pittsfield,  Yer- 
gennes,  Plattsburgh,  successively  became  perma- 
nent names  in  the  ever-widening  family  of  circuits. 
The  whole  period,  from  the  Revolution  to  the 
close  of  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain,  was 
experimental,  a  time  of  trial  for  the  nation,  a 
new  people,  learning  to  live  under  new  and  hith- 
erto untried  conditions.  Our  new  ecclesiastical 
life,  was,  in  like  manner,  experimental.  We  suc- 
ceeded to  no  old,  cut  and  dried  mediaeval  system, 
The  woods  of  the  new  world  had  no  more  affinity 
for  prayer-books,  surplices  and  diocesan  episco- 
pacy than  the  nation  had  for  sceptres  and  crowns, 
orders  of  nobility  and  robes  of  state.  The  fathers 
had  to  feel  their  way  to  order,  consistency  and 
consolidation.  Duties  and  modes  were  novel, 
recruits  raw,  and  life  rough.  It  was  in  the  midst 
of  migratory  populations,  sojourning  in  log  cab- 
ins, riding  on  horseback  through  blazed  forest- 
2 


io  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

paths,  or  over  corduroy  roads,  and  swimming 
bridgeless  streams  that  itinerant  work  commenced 
in  America.  No  other  was  possible.  The  coun- 
try had  to  be  cleared  of  forests,  Indians,  wolves, 
bears,  panthers,  catamounts  and  rattlesnakes  to 
make  way  for  the  advent  of  civilization. 

The  Methodist  itinerant  rode  in  the  van  of 
the  never-ending  procession  of  emigrant  wagons 
till  they  halted,  perforce,  on  the  shores  of  the 
Pacific  ocean.  Forty  years  ago  a  favorite  theme 
with  New  England  home  missionary  agents  was 
"the  religious  destitution  of  the  great  West." 
"  Only  twenty  ministers  in  all  Illinois."  True,  only 
twenty  Congregational  and  twenty-five  Episcopal, 
but  eight  hundred  Methodist,  two  hundred  trav- 
eling and  six  hundred  local,  in  a  population  of 
700,000!  In  1803,  Albany  and  Saratoga  were 
in  the  Philadelphia  Conference.  Quarter  of  a 
century  later  there  had  grown  out  of  this  northern 
soil  four  presiding  elders'  districts,  numbering  44 
charges,  Sy  preachers,  and  16,200  lay  members. 
Distinguishing  names  were  first  given  to  the 
Conferences  in  the  Minutes  of  1802.  New  York, 
henceforward,  alternated  its  sessions  between  the 
northern  and  southern  portions  of  its  territory. 
In  the  south  it  held  seventeen  out  of  twenty  an- 
nual sessions  in  New  York  city.  In  the  north  it 
met  twice  (1803  and  1805)  at  Ashgrove.  Albany 
entertained  the  body  twice  and  Troy  five  times. 
Pittsfield,  in  Massachusetts,  and  Middlebury,  in 
Vermont,  were  favored  with  a  single  sight,  each, 
of  a  live  bishop. 

Of  the  219  men  in  the  hands  of  Elijah  Hedding, 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  u 

assisted  by  Robert  R.  Roberts,  for  distribution  at 
the  Green  street  church,  New  York,  1832,  Troy 
Conference  received  91,  of  whom  66  were  elders, 
23  probationers,  and  2  superannuates.  One-third 
of  the  effective  force  was  veteran,  two  having 
commenced  itinerant  life  with  the  century ;  a 
score  more  had  fallen  into  the  active  ranks  before 
i8t>o,  and  ten  had  been  members  of  General  Con- 
ference since  it  became  a  delegated  body.  The 
heroic  age  of  American  Methodism  was  already 
past — the  age  of  peculiar  labor  and  peculiar  sac 
rifice.  The  saddlebag  dynasty  was  passing  away. 
The  theological  Anaks  of  those  days  were  the 
last  graduates  of  "  Brush  College,"  the  institu- 
tion of  which  that  eccentric  polemic,  Peter  Cart- 
wright,  used  to  boast  of  being  an  alumnus.  It  was 
the  last  of  reading  the  Scriptures  in  the  original 
tongues,  a  la  John  P.  Durbin,  in  log  cabins,  by  the 
light  of  pitch-pine  knots  ;  the  last  of  horseback 
homiletical  studies — bible,  hymn-book  and  dis- 
cipline being  the  only  text-books  ;  the  last  of 
portmanteau  book-hawking  ;  the  last  of  the  plain 
garb,  straight  coat,  wide  felt  hat,  and  foretop  re- 
ligiously plastered  clown  over  the  forehead,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  puritan  and  shaker,  a  fashion 
ridiculed  endlessly  by  "  Vanity  Fair,"  in  earlier 
days,  but  the  very  top  of  the  mode  in  that  same 
"  Vanity  Fair,"  now,  the  pride  and  glory  of  the 
young  misses  of  the  ton,  known,  in  the  slang  of 
the  hour  as  their  ''beautifully  beautiful  bangs.' 
In  1835,  Wilbur  Fisk  wore  to  Europe  the  con 
ventional,  straight-waisted  uniform  which  he 
brought  from  the  itinerancy  to  the  college  presi- 


I2  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

dential  chair,  and  returned  the  following  year, 
after  representing  American  Methodism  at  the 
British  Conference,  dressed  in  the  ordinary  cos- 
tume of  the  period.  In  181 1,  Tobias  Spicer  was 
"  discontinued  "  for  presuming  to  marry  while  "on 
trial."  In  those  days  the  celibate  system  was  in 
full  vogue.  Of  the  84  preachers  constituting  the 
Virginia  Conference  only  three  were  married. 
In  1 816,  a  married  man  was,  for  the  first  time, 
made  bishop,  and  the  celibate  custom  went  by 
the  board,  though  there  are  not  wanting  instances 
to  suggest  that  while  marriage  is  a  good  thing, 
on  the  whole,  for  the  itinerancy,  occasional  cases 
of  celibacy  would  do  it  no  harm. 

These  were  the  days  of  the  waning  and  final 
extinction  of  the  circuit  system.  In  1832,  New 
York  city  was  divided  into  two  circuits,  east  and 
west,  supplied  by  five  preachers,  each,  who 
preached  in  rotation ;  six  years  later,  the  twelve 
churches  of  the  city  had  each  its  stationed 
preacher.  The  new  Troy  Conference  sent  88 
preachers  to  51  appointments  ;  twenty  years  later, 
144  out  of  169  were  stationed,  and  there  was 
scarcely  the  ghost  of  an  old  time  circuit  in  the 
entire  list  of  charges. 

Men  live  who  saw  the  last  of  conferences  with 
closed  doors,  an  idea  that  would  hugely  amuse 
a  modern  newspaper  reporter,  that  ubiquitous 
Robin  Goodfellow,  busy  as  fairy  Puck,  who 
would 

"put  a  girdle  'round   the  earth  in  forty  minutes." 

Said  reporter  would  smile  at  the  notion  that 
his   prying   pencil,    potent   as    a    housebreaker's 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL  i3 

jimmy,  could  not  force  any  door,  burglarize,  if 
need  were,  the  council  chamber  of  heaven,  and 
beat  ever\-  competitor  in  placing-  its  secrets  in 
staring  capitals  before  a  generation  of  newspaper 
gourmands  who  seem  to  regard  scandal  and  gos- 
sip as  the  choicest   nutriment   of  mind  and  soul. 

The  old  time  quarterly  love-feast  tickets  are 
not  yet  quite  forgotten  ;  though  modern  Metho- 
dists luxuriate  in  express  trains,  palace  cars  and 
through  tickets.  Their  fathers  rode  on  limited 
passes,  vised  quarterly,  and,  in  default  of  compli- 
ance with  the  conditions  of  the  road,  were  un- 
ceremoniously put  off  the  train  by  the  conductor 
or  dropped  at  the  way  stations. 

We  remember  the  days,  also,  when  each  mem- 
ber of  conference  had  to  leave  the  room  while 
his  character,  habits,  methods,  usefulness  or  use- 
/^j-ness,  were  freely  canvassed,  and  when,  if  these 
were  not  satisfactory,  some  method  was  speedily 
found  for  locating  him,  with  his  consent  or  with- 
out. 

There  is  not  so  much  talk  in  conferences  as 
formerly.  Even  a  spirited  debate  is  a  rarity. 
The  age  inclines  to  telegraphic  brevity,  despatch, 
directness.  It  was  not  so  a  generation  or  two 
ago.  Small  matters  elicited  lively  discussion 
and  every  man  had  to  have  his  say. 

Twenty  years  ago  there  lingered  among  us  a 
brother  who  always  sat  in  a  front  pew  on  the 
conference  floor,  watched  all  the  proceedings 
with  Argus  eyes  and  commonly  had  something 
to  say  on  every  point  at  issue.  Full  of  the  tra- 
ditions and  usages  of  the  past  and  jealous  for  old 


I4  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

time  precedents,  he  popped  up  twenty  times 
during  a  morning  session  with  some  inquiry, 
some  objection,  some  suggestion,  pertinent  or 
non-pertinent,  opportune  or  inopportune.  Dur- 
ing one  of  the  last  conferences  he  attended,  I 
dined  one  day  with  an  intelligent  Baptist  lady, 
who  had  never  witnessed  the  proceedings  of  an 
annual  conference  before  and  who  was  not,  of 
course,  familiar  with  the  terminology  of  Metho- 
dist Minutes  and  Discipline,  "  effective,"  "  super- 
numerary," "superannuate,"  though  she  had 
evidently  heard  of  the  latter.  In  all  seriousness 
she  put  to  me  the  embarrassing  question,  !'  who 
was  that  old  gentlenan  who  was  so  conspicuous 
in  the  doings  of  this  morning's  session  ?  I  think," 
said  she,  "  he  is  on  what  you  call  your  Dotage 
List."  It  is  consoling  to  age  and  superannuation 
to  believe,  though  it  may  be  only  a  shallow  con- 
ceit, that  dotage,  all  of  it,  does  not  belong  to 
years,  or  the  superannuate  class.  There  are 
occasional  instances  of  it  at  the  other  end  of  the 
line.  Some  are  dotards  at  thirty,  others  vig- 
orous at  seventy. 

The  fathers  did  dote  much  and  piously  upon 
their  "peculiarities," — plain  dress,  plain  churches, 
free  sittings,  and  the  like.  The  present  race  of 
Methodists  concedes  much  to  the  general  belief 
of  mankind  that  religion  is  an  affair  of  conduct 
and  not  of  clothes,  respects  the  heart  and  not 
the  hair,  is  independent  of  bodily  ornaments — 
flowers,  silks,  ribbons,  steeples,  pews,  bells,  or- 
gans, choirs  and  many  other  things  abominable 
to  the  Puritan  and  old   Methodist  regime.      De- 


SEMI-CEA  TEA  ,\  /.//.  i5 

spite  their  singularities,  incidental  or  cultivated, 
trivial  or  positively  objectionable,  those  stalwart 
sons  of  the  mountain  slopes  or  lake  and  river 
basins,  did  sturdy  work  and  used  every  effort  to 
prove  themselves  worthy  sons  of  the  indefatiga- 
ble Wesley,  in  the  gospel. 

Wesley,  like  Bonaparte,  with  a  healthy  body, 
alert  mind  and  wiry  constitution,  found  that  he 
could  do  with  six  or  seven  hours  sleep  and  make 
up  any  little  deficiencies  in  the  saddle.  Whole 
generations  of  Methodist  preachers  attempted 
suicide  by  trying  to  follow  his  example,  irrespect- 
ive of  physiological  or  climatical  conditions.  If 
Wesley  had  commenced  his  mission  in  mid-win- 
ter, in  the  region  of  the  St.  Lawrence  river,  with 
the  mercury  frozen  solid  in  the  bulb  of  the  ther- 
mometer, six  feet  of  snow  out  doors,  and  green 
wood  for  the  fire-place  within,  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  four  o'clock  rising  and  five  o'clock  preaching 
Methodists  would  have  been  as  scarce  as  Baptists 
in  Greenland. 

Our  voluminous  pioneer  biography  bristles 
with  incidents  of  labor,  privation,  danger  and 
suffering.  The  "  hardships  of  the  early  itiner- 
ants" is  an  ever-recurring  theme.  Nevertheless, 
one  point  seems  to  be  often  overlooked,  and  that 
is,  that  the  hardships  and  sacrifices  of  the  pioneer 
peoples  were  as  great  as  those  of  their  spiritual 
guides,  that  the  best  the  people  had,  though  it 
were  only  corn  bread,  "  hog  and  hominy"  was 
always  at  the  service  of  the  preacher.  Ministers 
of  consolation,  sons  of  thunder,  weeping  Jere- 
miahs or  wrathful  denouncers  of  iniquity  and  sin, 


1 6  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

these  heralds  of  the  Cross  flamed  through  the 
land.  If  the  incidents  of  their  individual  biog- 
raphy and  the  characteristics  of  their  individual 
persons  and  ministry  have  never  been  written, 
or  have  faded  from  recollection,  the  flavor  of 
their  excellence  and  the  traditions  of  their  spirit 
and  modes  influence  our  lives  and  guide  our  con- 
ference delibrations  to  this  day. 

The  Conference  of  1832  was  a  live  body. 
What  has  become  of  these  noble  men  ?  The  an- 
swer to  this  question  will  remind  us  of  the 
changes  wrought  by  time.  Sordid  souls,  wor- 
shipers of  the  present,  imbued  with  slight  rever- 
ence for  the  past,  and  little  influenced  by  esprit 
du  corps,  will  reply,  "who  cares?"  "Let  the 
dead  bury  their  dead."  What  has  this  rushing 
age  to  do  with  the  fossils  and  fogies  and  mum- 
mied remains  of  two  generations  past?  "  A  living 
dog  is  better  than  a  dead  lion."  The  old  look 
backward,  the  young,  forward,  impersonations 
of  memory  and  hope.  Frightful  bores,  these 
Jonathan  Old  Bucks,  with  their  Rip  Van  Winkle 
stories  about  "  old  times,"  as  if  any  "  former 
times  were  better  than  these  !  "  Another  class, 
more  reverential,  more  inclined  to  sentiment, 
history,  tradition,  will  heed,  with  becoming 
thoughtfulness,  the  solemn  inquiry 

"  Your  fathers  where  are  they  ? 
And  the  prophets — do  they  live  forever  ?" 

It  is  pertinent  to  the  occasion  to  inquire  what 
has  befallen  the  91  men  that  constituted  the 
original  Troy  Conference  ?  The  General  Min- 
utes answer  this  question,  partially.      Two-thirds 


SEMI-CENTENNL  1 1 .  t7 

of  them  arc  dead.  Three-fourths  of  the  young 
men  who  were  probationers  in  1S32,  are  dead. 
The  figures  composing  the  number  91  are  re- 
versed. Only  19  of  the  91  are  known  to  be 
alive.  Seven  of  these  are  in  the  Troy  Confer- 
ence, all  superannuates,  of  from  five  to  twenty 
years'  standing.  Ten  have  disappeared  from 
view  through  the  several  doors  of  conference 
exit.  Eleven  still  live  in  other  conferences,  nine 
on  the  retired  list  ;  one  only  is  effective."* 

Into  this  ministerial  close  corporation  have 
been  received,  in  the  last  fifty  years,  six  hundred 
and  thirty  men,  of  whom  less  than  two  hundred 
and  fifty  compose  the  Troy  Conference  to-day. 
Like  everv  thincr  human,  an  annual  conference 
exhibits  the  ordinary  phenomenon  of  out-go  and 
income,  waste  and  supply.  The  lay  member- 
ship, including  the  6,000  carried  off  by  the  un- 
righteous severance  of  Western  Vermont,  despite 
all  drains  by  death,  secessions  and  removals,  is 
twice  what  it  was  in  1832,  while  the  ministry  for 
the  same  period  has  increased  in  triple  ratio, 
giving  an  effective  minister  to  every  200  mem- 
bers, or  one  in  1,000  to  the  Methodist  popula- 
tion. The  tabulated  history  of  the  ministerial 
conference  is  as  follows : 

Original  Nucleus,  -  91 

Received  on  Probation, 511 

Received  by  Transfers  and  other  modes,       -         119 


Total  Conference  Corps,  -  -  -     721 

♦Joseph  Ayers,  presiding  cider  of   Bellefontaine  District,  Central  Ohio,  fifty- 
two  years  in  the  itinerant  tic-Id. 


iS  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

PER  CONTRA. 

Deceased,            -------  184 

Living  in  Sister  Conferences,        -         -         -  no 

Discontinued  after  brief  trial,             -         -  -       80 

Located  permanently,            -  61 

Withdrawn  from  the  connection,       -         -  -       28 

Expelled  for  various  causes,         ...  u 

Members  of  the  Conference  to-day,           -  -    247 

Total,         -  -  -  -  -         -  721 

The  Conference  has  also  118  local  preachers, 
once  a  useful  order,  but  now  chiefly  the  "  vesti- 
bule or  the  Botany  Bay"  of  the  Annual  Confer- 
ences. 

The  Troy  Conference  may  be  fitly  character- 
ized as  rural,  its  two  commercial  capitals,  Albany 
and  Troy,  being  about  mid-way  in  rank  with  the 
first  fifty  cities  of  the  Republic,  classed  accord- 
ing to  population,  yet  it  is  among  the  foremost 
in  clerical  force,  lay  membership,  Sunday  School 
work  and  benevolent  contributions.  About  one- 
fourth  of  the  Conferences  of  the  connection 
report  church  property  of  a  million  dollars  and 
upwards  in  value.  Troy  stands  eighth  in  this 
list,  with  the  same  grade  of  church  debt.  It 
ranks  as  tenth  or  eleventh  in  ministerial  support, 
fifteenth  in  superannuate  collections,  several 
grades  below  what  it  ought  to  be  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  in  the  number  of  superannuates  and 
supernumeraries  it  is  the  banner  Conference  of 
the  connection  !  Its  corps  of  preachers  and  re- 
serves lacks  only  five  of  being  equal  to  the  whole 
effective  force  of  the  original  body ! 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  i9 

The  Conference  has  always  taken  lively  in- 
terest in  education  and  has  experienced  its  full 
share  of  the  customary  failures  of  popular  effort 
in  that  direction.*  It  may  felicitate  itself  upon 
its  steady  recognition  of  the  grand  reforms  of 
the  century;  its  war  record;  its  rank  and  work 
in  the  quadrennial  Conferences;  its  occasional 
contributions  to  the  literature  of  the  church  ;f 
its  honor  in  counting  in  its  membership  two  men 
on  their  way  to  the  bishopric, %  and  another, 
equally  distinguished,  en  route  {or  the  editorship 
of  the  Quarterly  Review,^  its  present  honor  in 
the  chairmanship  of  the  Book  Committee,  |  the 
embodied  General  Conference  in  the  interval 
between  sessions. 

No  less  than  sixty  self-denying  presbyters  of 
grave  character  and  years  have,  from  time  to 
time,  consented  to  serve  the  Conference  as  dioce- 
san overseers  by  episcopal  grace  or  popular  nomi- 
nation, personally  grateful,  no  doubt,  for  the  op- 
portunity afforded  for  self-sacrifice  and  practising 
itinerancy  in  primitive  style  and  on  first  prin- 
ciples, with  entirely  subordinate  reference  to  the 
fact  of  its  being  a  tolerably  fair  passport  to  the 
general  councils  of  the  tribe  and  a  seat  among 
its  chief  sachems,  since  it  has  happened  that 
of  the  fifty  men  who  have  represented  the  min- 
isterial body  in  General  Conference,  one-half 
have  been  presiding  elders  !     Nevertheless,  these 

*In  this  year  of  grace,  1882,  it  patronizes  two  institutions,  Troy  Conference 
Academy,  Chas.  H.  Dunton.  Principal,  and  Fort  Edward,  N.  Y.,  Institute,  Jos. 
E,  Kintf,  President. 

tNotably.  F.  G.  Hibbard  and  D.  D.  Whedon,  Commentaries. 
*John  Alley  and  Jesse  T.  Peck. 
^Daniel  D.  Whedon. 
lh  uner  Eaton. 


2o  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

cabineteers  have  all  been  able,  hard-working 
men,  and  the  office  though  of  less  use  than  for- 
merly, no  sinecure. 

For  forty  years  local  Minutes  have  been 
printed,  a  convenient  Year  Book,  suited  to  an 
age  when  every  interest,  sacred  and  secular,  from 
a  tooth  powder  to  a  sewing  machine,  from  a  col- 
lege society  to  a  presiding  elder's  district,  is  pro- 
moted   by  some    form    of   published   periodical. 

The  attitude  of  the  Conference  toward  the 
special  questions  that  have  agitated  the  church 
and  nation  from  time  to  time  has  partaken  both 
of  the  conservative  and  the  progressive. 

In  1844,  the  body  voted  overwhelmingly  to  let 
the  South  go  and  take  with  her  an  equitable 
share  of  church  property  according  to  the  "  Plan 
of  Separation."  The  vote  of  the  border  Con- 
ferences turned  the  scale  and  converted  the  pro- 
posed peaceful  division  into  rebellion  and  seces- 
sion. On  lay  delegation  the  laity  of  the  Con- 
ference voted  for,  while  the  clerical  body  voted 
against,  the  mild  infusion  of  it  that  was  pro- 
posed for  our  church  councils  in  a  spirit  suffi- 
ciently fogeyish  to  suit  its  sternest  official  oppo- 
nent, the  late  Edward  R.  Ames. 

The  body  has  had,  from  the  beginning,  stal- 
wart preachers  and  herculean  laborers.  Its  work 
has  been  mainly  domestic,  the  motion  of  its  in- 
conspicuous spheres  regular  and  orbital.  An 
occasional  comet  has  flashed  athwart  the  sys- 
tem, engendering  the  usual  apprehension  caused 
by  these  erratics,  distinguished  from  fixed  stars 
by  a  thin,  misty,  transparent  nucleus  in  the  way 


SEMI-CENTENNJA  L.  21 

of  head  and  millions  of  leagues  of  nebulous 
spread  in  the  rear. 

Sunflower  aesthetics  in  the  line  of  oratory, 
music,  poetry,  have  not  been  over-abundant  in 
these  rustic  regions.  Watts,  the  Wesleys  and 
the  Medievalists  have  rendered  it  well  nigh  im- 
possible for  any  modern  to  add  any  thing  to  the 
world's  stock  of  genuine  hymns.  It  is  a  curious 
fact,  highly  illustrative  of  the  power  of  culture, 
that  the  Church  of  England,  whose  fixed  ritual 
allows  slender  provision  for  hymn  singing, 
should,  nevertheless,  have  been  most  prolific  in 
hymn  writers.  Ten  Episcopal  hymnists  find 
place  in  the  new  hymnal,  but  a  Methodist  hymn 
writer  worth  the  name  would  be  a  lusus  natures  ! 

Taste  for  nature  and  art  is  no  longer  piously 
suppressed.  In  1850,  when  Jenny  Lind  was 
entrancing  New  York  with  her  divine  songs,  I 
asked  Father  Lane,  old  time  book  agent,  if  he 
had  followed  the  multitude  and  visited  the  scene 
of  her  triumphs,  Trippler  Hall.  He  thanked 
God  that  he  had  "seen  neither  the  inside  of  it 
nor  the  outside."  One  of  our  superintendents 
is  said  to  have  passed  Niagara  Falls  seven  times 
on  his  episcopal  tours  without  diverging  from 
his  direct  course  to  see  a  revelation  of  God  that 
hundreds  have  crossed  the  ocean  to  reverence  ! 

This  age  has  little  of  the  Quaker  prejudice  of 
the  one  or  the  Spartan  devotion  to  duty  of  the 
other.  It  has  studied  Burke  on  the  Sublime 
and  Beautiful,  looked  into  Hogarth's  Analysis 
of  Beauty,  read  Matthew  Arnold  and  Principal 
Shairp  on  Culture,  and  listened  to  Oscar  Wilde. 


22  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

While  it  has  no  leanings  toward  church  mil- 
linery, and  abhors  artificial  flowers  like  the  door- 
keeper of  an  old-time  love  feast,  it  has  no  objec- 
tion to  a  genuine  horticultural  display,  provided 
it  be  not  of  that  extravagant  magnitude  that 
makes  it  equally  improvident  for  the  impecuni- 
ous to  marry  or  die.  Beauty  is  a  relative  word. 
Fashion  renders  the  intrinsically  ugly  beautiful. 
The  dress  and  manners  of  the  fathers  were  beau- 
tiful in  their  time — unspeakably  ugly  to  us. 
They  could  not  help  becoming  obsolete. 

It  is  equally  absurd  to  petrify  fashions,  and  to 
endeavor  to  force  the  creeds  and  rituals  of  one 
generation  upon  generations  following.  What 
is  exactly  fitted  to  one  age  of  the  world  is  totally 
out  of  joint  with  another.  Cardinal  truths, 
laws,  general  principles,  fit  all  times  ;  details, 
special  rules,  dispensations  change  as  men 
change.  Rome's  Latin  ritual  is  a  body  of  death. 
It  was  a  live  medium  when  it  began  to  be  used, 
the  language  of  the  masses.  In  the  run  of  the 
centuries  one  word  after  another  died  on  the 
tongue  of  the  priest  till  all  was  corpse  in  his 
altar  ministrations.  The  fashions  in  dress  and 
beliefs  to-day,  in  a  century  will  be  as  ridiculous 
as  the  ugly  head-dresses  of  the  Roman  sister- 
hoods. All  healthy  growth  is  a  process  of  death 
as  well  as  a  process  of  life.  All  healthy  organ- 
isms are  actively  engaged  in  sloughing  off  the 
dead  and  replacing  the  old  and  defunct  with  that 
which  is  new,  vigorous,  life  sustaining  and  life 
creating.  Ecclesiastical  organizations  are  no 
exception  to  this  law.      Rules,  regulations,  ordi- 


SEMI-CEXTRXXIAL. 


23 


nances,  questions  and  catechisings  become  obso- 
lete, and  books  of  creed  and  discipline  dead 
letter.  The  indefinite  multiplication  of  ques- 
tions for  the  conduct  of  quarterly  and  annual 
Conferences  will  not  infuse  life  into  that  out  of 
which  the  life  and  spirit  have  once  departed.  It  is 
a  question  of  vital  importance  to  Methodists  and 
General  Conferences  how  many  and  what  of  the 
prudentials  of  the  last  century  are  fitted  to  this  ! 
We  live  in  a  new  world,  if  not  in  "  a  new 
heaven,"  at  least  a  "  new  earth." 

The  era  of  the  organization  of  the  Troy  Con- 
ference was  one  of  the  world's  transition  periods. 
Forces  were  being  developed  that  affected,  un- 
precedently,  the  physical,  civil,  social  and  religi- 
ous welfare  of  mankind.  Every  passing  century 
has  a  grandeur  of  its  own.  Every  part  of  God's 
creation  manifests  a  variety  that  scorns  repeti- 
tions and  tends  to  the  infinite.  The  great  law 
of  averages  and  compensations  distributes  ad- 
vantages among  the  centuries.  Each  has  its 
own  revelations  and  inspirations,  each,  its  full 
share  of  the  wondrous  and  the  useful.  The 
fragment  of  the  19th  century  now  under  review 
has  been  especially  prolific  in  physical  and  social 
wonders.  What  were  some  of  the  thoughts  and 
doings  that  busied  the  brains  and  hands  of  men 
in  1832  ? 

Morse,  on  a  return  voyage  from  Europe,  was 
studying  out  methods  of  applying  the  electro- 
magnetic currents  (discovered  by  Oersted  in 
18 19)  to  the  transmission  of  thought  ;  and  de- 
veloping, step  by  step,    that  wonderful   system 


24  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

which  now  clothes  the  globe  with  thought 
nerves,  and  enables  antipodal  hemispheres  to 
converse  with  each  other.  Stephenson  had  set 
the  whole  capital  world  into  a  ferment  of  stock 
company  enterprise  by  demonstrating  in  1830, 
on  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  railway,  the 
feasibility  and  advantages  of  locomotion  by 
steam.  In  May,  1832,  I  rode  on  the  rude  cars 
(coach  bodies  on  trucks)  that  began  that  season 
to  make  regular  trips  between  Albany  and 
Schenectady,  going  about  seven  miles  an  hour, 
the  rude  foreshadowing  of  that  mighty  system 
of  travel  and  transportation  now  familiar  to  all 
lands.  In  1832,  Daguerre  was  prosecuting  in- 
itial experiments  in  photography ;  Goodyear 
was  trying  to  vulcanize  india  rubber  ;  Harnden 
was  meditating  the  express  system  ;  omnibuses, 
invented  in  France,  were  taking  the  place  of 
hackney  coaches  in  the  cities  ;  gas  was  working 
its  way  into  general  favor,  displacing  tallow 
candles  and  oil  lamps  ;  friction  matches  were 
supplanting  the  old  flint  and  steel  and  tinder- 
box  ;  cook  stoves  were  succeeding  the  old  time 
fireplace,  with  its  array  of  bellows,  andirons, 
shovel  and  tongs,  cranes,  bake  kettles  and  long- 
handled  frying  pans  ;  chimney  sweeps  armed 
with  broom  and  scraper,  and  merry  song  were 
giving  way  to  bootblacks,  and  greasy  black-ball 
to  box  and  liquid  blacking.  The  immense 
anthracite  stove  business  was  entering  with  its 
numberless  inventions,  patterns  and  adaptations, 
employing,  like  almost  every  other  branch  of 
modern  invention,  armies  of  workmen   and  mil- 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  2$ 

lions  of  capital.  Since  then,  over  ocean  steam 
navigation  and  under  ocean  telegraphy,  over 
continent  railroads,  electric  lights  and  telegraphy 
have  succeeded  each  other  in  a  rapid  whirl  of 
evolution.  Stephenson  and  Morse  had  to  fight 
their  marvelous  creations — the  two  most  marvel- 
ous of  the  century — into  use  in  the  face  of  op- 
posing parliaments,  and  congresses,  and  popu- 
lar prejudices  of  every  description.  Now,  mirac- 
ulous revelations  in  mechanism  follow  each  other 
so  rapidly  as  scarcely  to  raise  a  ripple  of  excite- 
ment beyond  a  nine  days'  wonder,  when  the 
novelty  is  put  to  some  practical  purpose  and 
treated,  after  a  few  months,  as  though  mankind 
had  known  its  properties  and  uses  for  centuries. 
I  have  no  need  to  remind  you  of  the  revolu- 
tionizing influence  of  steam,  railroads,  telegraphs 
and  the  world  of  modern  inventions  upon  the 
sublime  science  of  human  butchery.  The  wars 
of  the  century  have  shared  the  mighty  impulse. 
They  have  been  distinguished  for  gigantic  prepa- 
ration, brevity,  and  we  are  pleased  to  add,  for 
humanitarian  tendencies.  The  venerable  frown- 
ing portals  of  Chinese  exclusiveness  have  been 
battered  from  their  rusty  hinges  by  British  can 
non  and  an  effort  made,  unsuccessful  we  hope,  to 
set  them  up  again  at  the  Golden  Gate  of  the 
harbor  of  San  Francisco.  Germany  and  Italy 
have  been  unified,  France,  once  imperialized, 
twice  republicanized  ;  slavery  abolished  by  the 
madness  of  its  own  defenders  ;  the  American 
Union  more  firmly  than  ever  nationalized. 

4 


26  SEMI-CRN  TENNTA  I. . 

This  was  the  era  also  of  wonderful  moral  and 
social  movements.  In  1832,  at  a  meeting  in 
Preston,  England,  the  total  abstinence  pledge 
was  introduced  and  the  society  called  teetotal. 
In  1832,  the  celebrated  ethical  teacher,  Way- 
land,  asked  the  significant  question,  "Is  it  right 
to  get  a  living  by  selling  poison  and  propagating 
plague  and  leprosy  all  around  you?"  In  1832, 
Melville  B.  Cox,  appeared  at  the  General  Con- 
ference in  Philadelphia  and  gave  the  first  life 
thrills  to  foreign  missionary  work  by  offering 
himself,  with  a  broken  body  and  a  fiery  soul,  for 
Africa.  His  dying  prayer  for  the  continent  of 
his  adoption  has  been  answered  at  the  head 
waters  of  the  Nile  and  Congo  in  the  labors,  dis- 
coveries and  missionary  endeavors  made  and 
prompted  by  the  noble  Scotchman,  whose  re- 
mains in  1873  w^re  honored  with  a  resting  place 
in  Westminster  Abbey. 

In  1832,  the  Oregon  Flatheads  appeared  at 
St.  Louis,  inquiring  after  the  white  man's  bible 
and  the  white  man's  God,  creating  a  mission 
which  proved  to  be  the  first  stone  in  the  founda- 
tion of  the  empire  of  the  Pacific.  In  1832, 
South  Carolina  passed  Calhoun's  celebrated 
nullification  act,  antagonized  the  next  year  by 
the  American  Anti-Slavery  Society,  disbanded 
in  1870,  perhaps  the  only  instance  in  history 
where  a  voluntary  association  did  not  find  some 
excuse  for  continuing  to  exist  after  its  special 
mission  had  been  accomplished.  In  1832,  Joseph 
Smith  and  Sidney  Rigdon  were  building  the  first 
Mormon  temple  at   Kirtland,  Ohio,  and  setting 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

in  motion  a  system  whose  blasphemies  and 
abominations  have  never  been  equaled  in  any 
heathenism,  ancient  or  modern. 

Millerism  and  Tractarianism  were  both  gret- 
ting  under  way,  the  one  to  land  in  annihilation- 
ism,  or  soul  sleep,  the  other  to  pave  a  broad 
highway  from  Anglicism  to  Rome. 

Horace  Greeley,  a  journeyman  printer  in  the 
metropolitan  city,  was  trying  initial  experiments 
with  a  penny  daily,  destined,  within  ten  years, 
to  blossom  out  into  one  of  the  most  gigantic  of 
modern  enterprises.  That  Mephistopheles  of 
journals,  the  New  York  Herald,  was  founded  in 
1833.  The  application  of  steam  to  rotary, 
cylinder  and  power  presses  has  so  enlarged  and 
multiplied  the  publishing  interests  of  the  world 
that  they  count  their  gains  by  millions  and  their 
productions  by  myriads  ! 

In  1832,  a  man  who  was  worth  $20,000  was 
considered  rich — in  1882,  the  great  New  York 
stock  operator,  Jay  Gould,  displays  $53,000,000 
vested  in  a  brace  of  railroads  and  one  telegraph 
line  to  amuse  an  idle  hour  with  a  circle  of 
friends.  The  bloated  wealth  of  the  age,  grow- 
ing out  of  improved  physical  conditions,  is  shown 
in  the  tax  list  of  New  York  city,  where  thirty 
corporations  are  assessed  on  from  one  million 
to  nine  and  a  half  millions  ;  ten  estates  belong- 
ing to  heirs,  and  twenty  private  individuals  are 
assessed  from  one  million  to  five  millions  each, 
and  this  only  represents  a  fraction  of  their  ac- 
tual wealth.  These  fortunes,  royal  in  propor- 
tions, are  so  common  as  scarcely  to  attract  re- 


2S  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

mark  in  this  age  of  wholesale.  Rome  had 
colossal  individual  fortunes.  They  represented 
the  fruits  of  provincial  plunder  and  conquest. 
England  has  had  gigantic  fortunes,  the  gifts  of 
chartered  monopolies,  or  the  yield  of  oppression 
and  extortion  in  dependencies  and  distant  trade 
marts. 

While  some  of  the  fortunes  of  the  day  are  the 
fruits  of  gambling  speculation,  over-reaching,  op- 
pression and  rascality,  a  goodly  number  of  them 
are  the  legitimate  outcome  of  business  profits, 
investments,  earnings  of  labor,  rise  in  the  values 
of  stocks  and  real  estate. 

Men  have  learned  that  wholesale  investments 
yield  wholesale  profits.  One  of  the  discoveries 
of  this  age  of  discoveries  is  pitt  money  into  an 
enterprise  if  you  want  to  get  money  out.  It  is 
this  lavish,  almost  unlimited  expenditure,  that 
has  made  the  modern  press  such  a  source  of 
wealth  to  proprietors.  Thirty  years  ago  Har- 
per's Magazine  was  commencing  existence  as  a 
doubtful  experiment.  Fifty  thousand  dollars  a 
year  in  literary  and  artistic  matter,  editorial 
ability  and  mechanical  execution  have  been  a 
magnificent  investment.  Its  secular  rivals,  Scrib- 
ners  and  the  Atlantic  for  instance,  expend  as 
much  per  month  as  some  deceased  church  mag- 
azines we  wot  of  expended  per  year  !  While 
the  agriculture,  the  commerce  and  manufactures 
of  the  age  are  all  at  wholesale,  carried  on  on  a 
gigantic  scale,  the  church  still  conducts  her  en- 
terprises on  a  retail  basis.  It  is  true  that  the 
doings    of    modern    benevolent    boards    would 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  2g 

shame  the  humble  beginnings  of  their  origina- 
tors, and  that  these  enterprises  have;  shared, 
measurably,  the  powerful  impetus  of  the  spirit 
of  the  age.  The  sight  of  the  million  dollar  pub- 
lishing house  at  805  Broadway,  would  make 
honest  John  Dickins  exclaim  with  wonder  that 
in  ninety  years  his  modest  capital  of  S600,  had 
waxed  to  a  million.  Sixty  years  ago,  in  1821, 
the  Methodist  Missionary  Society,  just  set  in 
motion,  reported  $800  collections  for  the  first 
year,  an  average  of  barely,  three  mills  per  mem- 
ber ;  last  year,  1881,  the  affiliated  missionary 
benevolences  of  the  church  aggregated  over 
§800,000,  an  average  of  fifty  cents  per  member. 

Contributions  have  increased  a  thousand  fold 
in  two  generations,  but  are  not  yet  half  what  they 
should  be  in  proportion  to  the  enormous  wealth 
of  the  church,  or  in  comparison  with  the  offer- 
ings of  other  denominations,  or  even  of  con- 
verted heathen.  The  ecclesiastical  benevolences 
of  the  age  form  a  striking  contrast  to  the  mam- 
moth gains  of  the  age.  The  means  are  ridicu- 
lously inadequate  to  the  magnitude  of  the  work 
proposed.  The  fifty  missionary  societies  of  the 
world  raise  only  about  87,000,000  all  told,  the 
amount  that  New  York  city  pays  annually  for 
amusements.  Eighteen  centuries  ago  (it  might 
shame  us  to  remember)  India  sent  three  thous- 
and Buddhist  missionaries  to  China  to  propa- 
gate, by  preaching  and  tracts,  the  tenets  of 
Gautama. 

Forty  years  ago,  P^euerbach,  the  great  German 
atheist,    insisted   vigorously    on    the    incompati- 


jo  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

bility  of  Christianity  with  the  times  upon  which 
we  have  fallen.  "  Christianity,"  he  says,  "  has 
long  vanished,  not  only  from  the  reason,  but 
from  the  life  of  mankind  ;  it  is  nothing  more 
than  a  fixed  idea,  in  flagrant  contradiction  with 
our  fire  and  life  assurance  companies,  our  rail- 
roads and  steam  carriages,  our  picture  and 
sculpture  galleries,  our  military  and  industrial 
schools,  our  lecture  theatres  and  scientific  mu- 
seums." 

It  is  our  opinion  that  Christianity  will  yet 
vindicate  its  right  to  live  in  the  enlistment  of  all 
the  newly  discovered  powers  of  the  19th  century, 
for  its  furtherance  and  propagation.  Hope  and 
fear  and  sympathy  are  undying.  Reverence 
will  always  seek  an  object  and  that  object  will 
not  be  the  god  that  Feuerbach  worships — Man. 
Slowly,  but  surely,  the  church  of  God  is  utilizing 
all  the  potencies  of  the  times.  The  gospel  flies 
on  the  wings  of  steam  to  the  most  distant  lands  ; 
bibles  are  printed  and  circulated  by  steam  ;  steam 
presses  annually  shower  abroad  millions  of  pages 
of  Christian  literature.  Through  the  telegraphic 
currents  the  heart  of  the  hitherto  lonely  mis- 
sionary now  throbs  in  daily  and  hourly  sympathy 
with  the  great  heart  of  the  church  at  home. 

In  this  age  of  social  and  physical  changes, 
nothing  has  been  more  remarkable  than  the  de- 
cline in  theological  controversy  that  has  taken 
place  within  the  last  generation.  Our  imme- 
diate predecessors  belonged  emphatically  to  the 
church  militant.  They  were  armed  at  all  times 
cap-a-pie  for  war,    offensive    and    defensive,   on 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  31 

Calvanism,  exclusive  communion,  and  "  isms"  of 
every  kind.  Methodism  was  contemned  and 
despised  by  all.  In  1832,  the  distinguished 
William  B.  Sprague,  of  Albany,  published  a  vol- 
ume of  revival  lectures  supplemented  by  twenty 
letters  from  the  most  distinguished  divines  of  the 
century,  college  professors,  princes  in  the  vari- 
ous denominations,  Wayland,  Baptist  ;  Alex- 
ander, Presbyterian  ;  Mcllvaine,  Episcopal  ;  who 
all  gave  their  ideas  on  revivals,  with  many  a 
warning  against  "excitement,"  "cant,"  "enthu- 
siasm," "exaggeration,"  "clap-trap,"  and  much 
praise  of  "  genuine  revival,"  "  not  spurious,"  but, 
never  a  letter  or  a  word  from  a  Methodist,  the 
representative  of  the  revival  church  par  excel- 
lence of  the  century. 

What  has  wrought  the  remarkable  change  in 
the  attitude  of  Christian  denominations  toward 
each  other  ?  Common  schools  have  been  a 
unifier;  the  combined  hostility  of  infidels,  Jews 
and  papists  to  the  school  system  has  unified 
protestants  ;  Sunday  schools  have  been  a  po- 
tential unifying  factor  ;  young  men's  Christian 
associations  have  leveled  the  barriers  of  creed  ; 
missionaries  have  not  dared  to  hoist  hostile  ban- 
ners in  the  presence  of  a  common  foe  on  the 
shores  of  heathenism  ;  temperance,  anti-slavery, 
and  other  benevolences  have  drawn  Christians 
together.  Polemics  have  disappeared  in  the 
face  of  actual  war,  bloodshed  and  conflict.  All 
classes  feel  the  change.  Even  Roman  Catholic 
orators  no  longer  call  us  "  infidels  "  and  "  her- 
tics,"  but  speak  of  us  as  "  separated  brethren." 


32  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

A  reminiscence  of  the  Conference  of  1832  is 
relevant.  It  was  the  year  of  the  advent  and 
destructive  ravages  of  the  Asiatic  cholera,  and 
we  well  remember  the  terror  that  its  dreaded 
approach  inspired.  In  mid-June  the  news  broke 
upon  the  startled  conference  that  the  world- 
scourge  had  reached  Whitehall  from  Canada, 
and  was  on  its  way  to  the  city.  The  Rev.  Mr. 
Schermerhorn,  a  delegate  from  the  general  asso- 
ciation of  the  churches  in  New  York,  came  to 
make  a  statement  to  the  conference  that  the 
plague  was  close  at  hand,  and  to  suggest  that  a 
delegation  from  the  Methodists  meet  one  from  the 
other  Churches  to  consider  what  shouldbedone  in 
the  premises.  Nathan  Bangs  and  Samuel  Mer- 
win  were  made  a  committee,  and  a  day  of  com- 
mon fasting  and  prayer  was  appointed.  What 
was  the  parent  of  this  then  unwonted  courtesy  ? 
was  it  fright  ?  or  faith  in  Methodist  prayers  ! 
Will  the  near  future  bring  further  and  closer 
unification  of  christians,  or  the  contrary  ;  will 
coming  years  witness  further  disintegrations  and 
subdivisions,  or  will  they  hail  grander  efforts  to 
consolidate  and  integrate?  Why  should  not  all 
the  denominational  missionary  societies  of  the 
country  be  placed  under  one  common  grand 
management  like  the  American  Bible  Society  ? 
What  but  pride  and  ambition  hinders  federal 
union  between  northern  and  southern  Metho- 
dists ?  It  is  objected  that  a  resulting  constitu- 
ency of  20,000  ministers  and  3,000,000  members 
would,  ratioed  as  now,  make  General  Conference 
unwieldy.     Certainly  ;  but  why  does  a  church  of 


SEMI-  CEN  TENNIA  L . 


33 


3,000,000  need  a  legislative  assembly  as  large  as 
that  of  the  United  States  which  represents 
50,000,000  ?  What  need  of  anything  more  than  a 
senate  of  bishops,  and  a  representative  assembly 
of  one  minister  and  one  layman  from  each  annual 
conference?  Shade  of  William  H.  Perrine  tell 
us  why  ! 

Brethren  of  the  Troy  Conference :  Three- 
fourths  of  you  are  young  men,  men  in  the  prime 
of  life,  all  of  whom  have  united  with  the  body 
within  the  last  twenty-five  years.  Of  the  re- 
maining one-fourth  two-thirds  are  out  of  the  ac- 
tive field.  There  comes  a  time  when  God  and 
the  church  call  a  man  out  of  the  work  as  surely 
as  they  originally  called  him  into  it.  The  vig- 
orous manhood  of  some  of  you  will  carry  you 
far  into  the  next  century,  and  what  a  host  of 
silent  social  changes  will  not  you  and  the  com- 
ing half  century  witness  ?  The  passional  preach- 
ing and  exhortation  of  the  past  have  given  place 
to  the  intellectual.  The  occupants  of  the  school 
house  bench,  rough  out-door  plank,  or  free  seat 
in  a  plain  free  church  were  wont  to  say  to  the  oc- 
casional circuiteer  "  move  us !"  The  elegant 
cushioned  pews  of  to-day  say  to  the  salaried 
graduate  of  college  and  theological  seminary 
"  instruct  us,"  "entertain  us."  In  another  fifty 
years  the  aesthetic  may  have  displaced,  entirely, 
the  emotional  and  intellectual.  Imposing 
ritual  may  have  usurped  the  place  of  gospel 
preaching  altogether,  and  Methodism,  if  pro- 
testant  at  all,  may  be  of  a  piece  with  that  High 
5 


34  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

style  that  has  been  characterized  as  the  "  vario- 
loid of  Romanism." 

What  the  church  edifices  of  1932  will  be  may 
be  judged  from  what  has  been.  Troy,  in  1809, 
was  a  village  of  3,500  inhabitants.  A  handful 
of  Methodists,  about  130,  built,  without  being 
able  to  finish,  a  small  white  wooden  church  in 
the  outskirts  of  the  village,  on  the  shores  of  a 
duck  pond,  at  a  cost  of  six  or  eight  hundred  dol- 
lars. Eighteen  years  afterward,  the  society,  num- 
bering 430,  still  undivided,  erected  a  brick  edi- 
fice costing  $7,000,  then  one  of  the  finest  churches 
outside  of  New  York  city. 

Forty-four  years  later  ( 1 8  7 1 )  after  ten  churches 
had  been  carved  out  of  the  original  society,  350 
members  remained  to  build  an  elegant  stone  edi- 
fice at  a  cost  of'$  1 00,000.  From  wood  to  brick 
the'increase  was  ten-fold,  from  brick  to  stone, 
twelve  to  fifteen  fold.  If  wealth  rolls  up  for  the 
half -century  to  come  as  it  has  during  the  last 
fiftyjyears,)State  street  can  easily  improve  twenty 
fold  on  the  last  outlay,  which  will  imply  an  arch- 
itectural investment  of  two  millions  of  dollars  ! 
a  vision  of  1932,  which  makes  us  tremble  for  the 
bones  of  Embury.  In  1832,  John  N.  M afrit 
placed  an  epitaph  over  them  which  promised 
that  Ash  Grove  should  be  their  "  last  resting 
place."  How  like  sarcasm  this  will  sound  when 
the  relics  of  this  new  St.  Philip  shall  be  the  gold- 
enshrined  attraction  of  a  hundred  Methodist 
Cathedrals  between  this  and  the  Pacific  Ocean  ! 

The  preacher  of  the  Troy  Conference  of  to- 
day has  a  vastly   more   complex  and   extended 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 


35 


•routine  of  duties  than  his  predecessor  of  fifty 
years  ago.  The  old-time,  hard-riding  itinerant 
preached  three  times  on  Sunday  to  different  con- 
gregations, and  every  day  in  the  week,  to  widely 
scattered  populations,  exercising  but  little  pas- 
toral supervision,  and  that  little  through  the  class 
leaders.  The  incumbent  of  to-day  is  pastor  as 
well  as  preacher,  combining,  in  theory,  evangel- 
istic labor  with  the  pastoral.  The  class  leader 
pastorate  went  out  of  existence  when  the  circuit 
system  went  out.  In  proportion  as  a  work  is 
evangelistic  it  fails  signally  to  be  pastoral. 
The  itinerancy  has  reduced  itself  to  a  limited 
pastorate.  With  people  and  preachers  clamor- 
ing to  have  that  limitation  extended  or  taken  off 
altogether,  how  long  before  the  present  system 
of  annual  and  triennial  changes  will  follow  the 
class  and  circuit  systems  ! 

The  loss  to  primitive  Methodism,  Method- 
ism pure  and  simple,  in  the  abrogation  of  the 
circuit  system  was  incalculable.  Methodism  at 
once  lost  its  evangelistic  character.  It  congre- 
gationalized  the  churches,  it  destroyed  the  com- 
munity idea.  It  became,  ever)'  man,  every 
church,  for  self.  Preachers  and  people  no 
longer  worked,  as  bees  work,  in  clusters,  for  the 
good  of  the  hive.  The  limited  pastorate,  Meth- 
odistically  considered,  proved  a  poor  substitute 
for  the  circuit  system.  If  Wesley  were  to  re- 
turn to  earth  and  resume  control,  he  would  break 
up  the  pastoral  and  restore  the  evangelistic. 
11  The  preachers,"  said  Asbury,  in  substance, 
'all  want  to  get  into  the  cities  and  stay  there.     I 


36  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

will  show  them  how  to  get  into  the  country." 
When  stationed  in  New  York  he  circuited  all 
about  on  Long  Island,  in  New  Jersey  and  up 
the  Hudson  wherever  he  could  find  hearers.  He 
got  the  General  Conference  of  1804  to  pass  the 
two  year  rule  of  limitation  to  get  some  "  star 
preacher  "  out  of  Albany,  who  was  disposed  to 
stick  to  the  city  indefinitely.  Individual  churches 
may  flourish,  but  it  is  at  the  expense  of  desti- 
tute districts  in  cities,  and  neglected  neighbor- 
hoods in  the  country.  To  build  up  a  single 
interest,  the  temporary  pastor  excuses  himself 
from  all  others.  It  is  impossible  to  do  two 
things  at  the  same  time,  and  do  both  well.  The 
effort  to  work  the  evangelistic  and  limited  pas- 
toral side  by  side  has  not  been  a  distinguished 
success  ;  something  like  trying  to  ride  two  horses 
at  once,  or  to  trundle  two  wheelbarrows  by  the 
same  hand. 

The  class-pastorate  was  a  superb  idea,  and 
worked  well  on  a  small  scale,  but  like  a  thou- 
sand inventions  buried  in  the  Patent  Office, 
which  worked  beautifully  in  model,  it  failed  to 
operate  successfully  on  a  grand  scale.  The 
death  of  classes  has  been  the  want  of  leaders, 
and  frightful  dearth  of  material  to  make  leaders 
of.  A  clerical  pastorate  was  inevitable,  but  an 
itinerant  pastorate  is  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
It  fails  to  supply  the  great  human  hunger  for 
permanent  leadership.  The  problem  of  the  hour 
is  can  the  time  limit  be  extended  or  removed 
without  destroying  the  connectional  bond,  and 
bringing  in  sheer  selfish  independency  ? 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  37 

The  calls  upon  the  time  and  attention  of  the 
modern  preacher  are  endless  in  number  and  va- 
riety, and  perplexingly  modified  by  the  changed 
habits  of  society.  He  finds  the  last  century  di- 
rections of  the  discipline  conflicting  with  the 
business  modes  of  the  day,  work  hours,  school 
hours,  meal  hours,  social  calling-  customs,  the 
seclusion  and  inaccessibility  of  households,  the 
season  of  the  year,  winter  holiday  recreations 
and  summer,  wood  and  sea-side,  vacations.  The 
leader  or  preacher  who  would  catch  his  members 
now  must  intercept  them  on  the  run.  In  addi- 
tion to  preaching  and  Sunday  and  week-day 
evening  services,  the  modern  minister  must  look 
after  a  great  number  of  financial  interests.  Fifty 
years  ago  only  one  of  fifteen  questions  proposed 
at  Conference  was  statistical,  the  report  of  "num- 
ber in  society."  Now,  the  general  minutes  pre- 
sent, in  appalling  array,  forty  solid  columns  of 
figures,  two-thirds  of  which  the  preacher  is  ex- 
pected to  supply  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  as, 
next  to  preaching,  the  most  vital  element  of  his 
ministerial  vocation. 

Exacting  societies,  pressed  by  debt,  suffering 
from  slovenly  or  incapable  management,  or  stim- 
ulated by  ambitious  rivalry  with  prosperous 
neighbors,  demand  of  the  appointing  power  the 
best  talent  in  the  conference  for  their  ministerial 
supply. 

For  S800  a  year,  half  the  wages  of  a  head  me- 
chanic, they  want  financial  ability  like  Jay 
Gould's  ;  learning  like  Adam  Clarke's  ;  eloquence 
like  Whitefield's ;    piety  like  John  Fletcher's;   a 


38  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

young  man  with  the  wisdom  of  a  veteran  ;  one 
who  will  be  always  in  his  study,  and  yet  always 
on  the  street,  "  visiting  from  house  to  house," 
who  will  lead  class  like  Carvosso  ;  interpret  bible 
like  Miss  Smiley  ;  be  aVincent  in  Sunday  School, 
an  Ives  or  Kimbal  on  church  debt ;  sing  in  pray- 
er meetings  like  Philip  Phillips  or  Chaplain  Mc- 
Cabe,  and  compete  successfully  in  revival  work 
with  evangelist  Harrison,  or  a  national  camp 
meeting. 

It  is  a  fair  picture  of  the  times  to  say,  that  he 
will  be  lucky,  if  some  inland  charge  does  not 
press  him  to  personate  Daniel  in  the  lion's  den 
in  an  operatic  cantata,  got  up  to  buy  books  for 
the  Sunday  School  library  ;  or  if  the  Ladies' 
Aid  Society,  on  whom  a  magnanimous  board  of 
masculine  officials  has  thrown  the  brunt  of  the 
church  finances,  does  not  set  him  at  a  fair  or 
festival  to  dishing  sloppy  ice  cream  at  fifteen 
cents  the  small  plate,  or  to  ladling  out  oyster 
soup  at  fifty  cents  a  stew,  in  which  two  lean  and 
lonesome  bivalves  float  in  a  pint  of  lukewarm 
water,  tinged  with  milk  !  ! 

What  will  the  Troy  Conference  of  1932  be? 
Lift  for  a  moment  the  curtain  that  hides  futurity. 
The  physical  features  of  this  romantic  region 
will  remain  the  same.  Mansfield,  king  of  the 
Green  Mountain  range,  will  nod  across  lovely 
Champlain  to  Marcy,  monarch  of  the  Adiron- 
dack group.  The  lakelets  of  the  north  woods 
will  send  their  cool  and  pellucid  stores  to  form  the 
incipient  Hudson,  to  be  swelled  as  it  rolls,  now 
in  smooth  reaches  and  now  in  tumbling  falls  and 


SEMI-i  7:.\  TENNIAL.  39 

foaming  cataracts  by  the  Schroon,  the  Sacandaga, 

the  Kills  and  the  broad  Mohawk,  till  it  becomes 
an  arm  of  the  sea,  and  proudly  bears  the  com- 
merce of  the  nations.  Holy  Horicon,  island 
gemmed,  and  Saratoga  with  its  sparkling,  world- 
famed  fountains,  will  be  thronged  as  now  with 
health  seekers  and  summer  loiterers. 

But  what  shall  be  the  changes  wrought  in  so- 
cial life  by  human  invention  and  divine  revela- 
tion ?  No  man  dare  prophesy.  Grand  as  have 
been  the  achievements  of  the  century,  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  those  of  the  future  will  be  grander. 
It  is  humbling  to  vanity  to  reflect  that  the  proud 
locomotives,  elegant  palace  cars,  saloon  steam- 
ers, beautiful  and  efficient  fire  engines,  magnifi- 
cent variety  of  manufacturing  and  farming  ap- 
paratus, convenient  gas,  kerosene,  telegraph, 
telephone  and  electric  illuminators  will  be  just 
as  antiquated  and  laughable  to  the  Trojans  of 
1932,  as  the  lumbering  vehicles,  rude  imple- 
ments, sanded  floors,  hand  looms,  tallow  candles, 
tin  sconces,  foot  stoves  and  warming  pans  of  our 
immediate  ancestors  are  to  us  to-day. 

Slow  and  old  fogy  shall  we  seem  to  gener- 
ations that  ride  on  noiseless  trains  with  the  ve- 
locity of  storm-winds  ;  that  navigate  oceans  in 
submarine  crafts  below  the  realm  of  tempests 
and  out  of  the  reach  of  surface  agitations ;  that 
fly  through  the  air  on  the  wings  of  steam  ;  that 
dispel  night-darkness  and  pale  the  moon  with 
electric  suns  ;  that  may  put  wool  and  silk  and 
cotton  into  one  end  of  a  machine  and  turn  out 
ready-made  suits,  and  printed  books  at  the  other, 


40  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

when  bicycles  shall  out-speed  horses  ;  and  when 
telegraphic  and  telephonic  communication  shall 
put  distant  states  and  people  in  contact,  anti- 
quate  slow-paced  postal  service,  and  even  render 
attendance  upon  the  sanctuary  to  listen  to  ser- 
mons unnecessary.  Millennial  indeed  will  be 
the  condition  of  the  world,  if  its  social  and  re- 
ligious development  keeps  pace  with  the  wide 
promise  of  the  physical.  What  posterity  will 
think  of  our  dress,  our  speech,  our  inventions, 
our  social  and  religious  modes,  is  of  less  conse- 
quence to  us  than  what  they  will  think  and  say 
about  our  work,  our  objects,  character  and  aims. 
Shall  we  appear,  to  them,  as  heroic  as  the 
itinerant  fathers  appear  to  us  ?  Shall  we,  like 
them,  immortalize  the  John  Brown  heroism 
that  is  born  of  self-sacrifice,  conflict,  victory  ? 
We  have  discovered  most  happily  that  it  is  ig- 
nobly fratricidal  to  war  on  our  fellow  christians, 
that  it  is  a  Don  Quixote  battle  with  wine  skins 
to  slash  madly  at  theologico-metaphysical  ab- 
stractions. Our  enemies  are  concrete.  The 
offspring  of  the  times.  Wholesale  production 
has  generated  wholesale  vices.  It  is  not  a  single 
commandment  that  is  here  and  there,  infringed, 
but  a  grand  railroad  smash-up  of  all  the  tables 
of  the  law.  Respect  for  God  and  man  are  old- 
time  superstitions.  The  restful  Sabbath  is  con- 
verted into  a  day  of  laborious  revelry  or  stupefy- 
ing dissipation.  Marriage  is  lightly  set  aside  by 
divorces.  Robbery  is  no  longer  the  taking  of 
purses  on  the  highway,  but  the  stock  operation 
that  swindles   banks  and   cities  and   individuals 


SE .  \n-CENTENNlA  1 .  4I 

to  the  tune  of  hundreds  of  thousands  and  mil- 
lions. Politicians  and  legislatures  are  often  a 
bye-word  and  a  hissing.  Partisanship  swallows 
up  patriotism.      Bribery  is  systematized. 

The  enemies  we  have  to  contend  with  are  the 
concreted  vices  of  the  times.  The  labor  ques- 
tion, the  monopoly  question,  the  war  of  the 
white  race  upon  the  dark  ;  of  the  Southerns,  par- 
ticularly of  uneasy  South  Carolina,  upon  the 
blacks  ;  of  demented  California  upon  the  yellow  ; 
of  vacillating  politicians  on  both,  these  are  the 
open  problems  in  christian  ethics  to-day.  The 
christian  minister's  business  is  to  save,  both  the 
sinned  against  and  the  sinners.  The  preacher's 
first  and  highest  mission  is,  not  the  sanctifica- 
tion  of  saved  saints,  but  the  salvation  of  unsav- 
ed sinners.  If  a  steamer  blows  up  at  a  wharf, 
and  hundreds  are  struggling  for  life  in  the  river, 
the  first  object  of  every  philanthropist  will  be  to 
save  as  many  from  immediate  destruction  as  pos- 
sible. Furnishing  dry  clothes  and  clean  suits 
will  be  an  after  thought,  benevolent  but  secon- 
dary. 

Progress  is  the  pet  watchword  of  these  pro- 
gressive times,  but  highest  progress  is  not  al- 
ways forward  movement.  In  some  things  seem- 
ing retrograde  is  real  advance.  Some  things 
come  complete  from  the  hand  of  God,  and  some 
things  were  perfected  by  human  ingenuity  ages 
ago.  In  pursuit  of  these,  return  to  first  princi- 
ples is  highest  progress.  In  poetry  we  cannot 
improve  on  Homer  or  Isaiah  ;  in  ethics  we  find 
6 


42  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

nothing  superior  to  the  ten  commandments,  or 
the  sermon  on  the  mount.  In  architecture  we 
we  cannot  go  beyond  the  Grecian  orders,  or  the 
Gothic  of  the  middle  ages.  In  creed  and  wor- 
ship we  cannot  improve  upon  the  simplicity  of 
the  New  Testament.  Progress  here  is  out  of 
the  question. 

Protestantism  was  progress  when  it  went 
back  to  New  Testament  principles  and  rejected 
the  theatrical  substitutes  of  medievalism  in 
christian  worship.  Methodism  has  had  little  re- 
gard for  calendar  Christianity,  that  reverence  for 
"  times  and  -seasons  "  so  annoying  to  the  apostle 
Paul.  We  have  retained  the  forms  of  the  fathers 
in  all  their  bald  simplicity.  Have  we  their  enthu- 
siasm ?  Spurgeon  prays  "  Lord  give  us  the  ear- 
nestness and  fire  of  the  early  Methodists."  Pro- 
fessor Hopkins,  of  the  Auburn  Theological 
Seminary,  laments  the  cold  "  silence  worship  " 
of  the  Presbyterians.  His  reviewer  says,  "we 
sit  bolt  upright,  stock  still,  dumb  as  oysters,  and 
let  the  preacher  and  choir  monopolize  the  entire 
worship  after  the  most  approved  style  of  the 
Romish  mass."  Prof.  Hopkins  envies  the  Metho- 
dist the  privilege  of  an  occasional  "  Amen  !" 
"  Hallelujah  !"  "  Bless  the  Lord  !"  Alas  !  in 
Methodist  congregations  and  even  in  Methodist 
conferences  these  vocal  expressions  of  feeling 
are  becoming,  like  angel's  visits,  few  and  far  be- 
tween. The  British  parliament  vents  its  appro- 
bation of  a  speaker  or  sentiment  in  the  enthu- 
siastic "hear!"  "hear!"  The  successful  operatic 
composer    or    performer  in   Italy,   or  the  victor 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  u 

in  a  Spanish  bull  fight  is  saluted  with  loud 
"bravos  !"  The  political  stump  speaker  is  greeted 
with  cheers  and  hurrahs,  and  the  popular  sover- 
eign or  leader  honored  with  heaven  rending 
shouts  and  acclaims. 

When  Dr.  Coke,  ninety-five  years  ago  preach- 
ed to  the  theatre  going  West  Indians,  they  ap- 
plauded his  sermons  as  they  did  their  favorite 
plays  and  actors,  with  hand  clapping  and  stamp- 
ing. The  audiences  of  Beecher  and  Talmage 
stimulate  the  eloquence  of  Plymouth  church  or 
Brooklyn  tabernacle  in  the  same  way.  Opera 
house  General  Conferences  adopt  opera  house 
styles  of  performance.  Business  meetings  and 
lectures,  held  in  our  churches,  copy  General 
Conference  manners  and  do  the  same.  This 
mode  of  demonstration  is  beginning  to  force  it- 
self (as  in  the  Guiteau  trial)  into  courts  of  jus- 
tice, though  it  is  felt  to  be  exceedingly  out  of 
place  there.  It  is  specially  repugnant  to  wor- 
ship hours  and  the  house  of  God.  Yet  it  is  as 
natural  for  strong  religious  feeling,  as  it  is  for 
secular,  to  seek  vent  in  vocal  expression  ;  as 
natural  to  express  accord  with  a  preacher  as  with 
a  lecturer,  a  public  singer,  a  rostrum  or  stump 
political  speaker.  Methodism  from  the  first,  has 
encouraged  ejaculatory  responses,  and  has  re- 
garded them  as  perfectly  fitted  to  the  place  and 
occasion.  The  pulpit  has  relied  on  the  pew,  not 
for  applause,  to  feed  personal  vanity,  but  for  in- 
spiration, and  especially  for  the  divine  aid  vouch- 
safed in  answer  to  united  prayer.  Scripture 
ejaculations  have  ever  been  felt  to  be  in  perfect 


44 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 


harmony  with  the  house  and  worship  of  God, 
perfectly  consonant  with  the  style  of  religion 
which  the  followers  of  Wesley  profess.  Har- 
monies in  music  form  not  a  fitter  running  ac- 
companiment to  a  stirring  melody  than  does  a  run- 
ning undertone  of  suitable  ejaculatory  responses 
to  a  prayer  or  sermon  with  those  whom  religion 
makes  happy.  And  what  is  genuine  Methodist 
religion  ?  not  doctrine  but  spiritual  experiences  ; 
not  Sinai  but  Zion  ;  not  Moses  and  the  law,  but 
Christ  and  the  gospel  ;  not  the  opening  poems 
of  the  book  of  psalms,  wailing,  discouraged  and 
imprecatory,  but  the  last,  paeans  of  praise  and 
thanksgiving  ;  not  Romish  purgatory  and  Cal- 
vanistic  despair,  but  Arminian  hope  and  peren- 
nial heaven  ;  not  the  gloom  of  Gothic  Cathedrals, 
but  the  light  Grecian,  roofed  with  the  blue 
heavens,  and  full  of  glorious  sunshine;  not  bile, 
nor  misery,  nor  spasmodic  rapture  ;  not  momen- 
tary ecstacy,  nor  laughing  gas,  but  a  happiness 
beaming,  in  unclouded  sunlight,  from  the  face  of 
God,  permanent  as  the  lustre  of  the  stars,  full  as 
the  flow  of  the  full  river  or  the  waves  of  the 
abundant  sea.  Holy  hearts  and  sanctified  voices 
found  better  modes  of  giving  expression  to  feel- 
ing than  political  hurrahs.  Hosannahs  took 
the  place  of  huzzahs.  Hallelujahs  were  the 
natural  vent  for  irrepressible  ebullitions  of  holy 
rapture.  The  in  excelsis  gloria  of  ritualistic 
Christianity  set  to  a  thousand  grand  strains  of 
music,  became  the  good  square  old  English  word 
''glory"  on  the  lips  of  the  young  convert  or  the 
happy  christian.     The  gospel  preacher,  instead  of 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL  i5 

being  obliged  to  carry  his  congregation,  (a  fear- 
ful load  for  a  single  pair  of  shoulders,)  found 
himself  buoyed  by  the  enthusiasm  of  multi- 
tudes, not  seldom  borne  aloft  on  the  wings  of  a 
chorus  of  "aniens"  to  the  third  heaven  of  White- 
fieldian  eloquence.  The  man  who  could  not 
preach  with  such  backing  had  good  reason  to 
doubt  his  call  to  the  gospel  ministry  !  What  a 
rush  of  holy  memories  comes  over  us  as  we  recall 
the  days  of  the  full  exercise  of  this  right  arm  of 
Methodistic  power  !  What  storms  of  Methodist 
applause  did  Edmund  S.  Janes  and  Noah  Lev- 
ings  evoke  in  conferences  as  bible  agents  !  What 
memorable  instances  occur  to  each  and  all  of  the 
reciprocal  zeal,  power,  and  magnetic  influence 
of  pew  and  pulpit  ?  Photography  preserves  for 
us  the  features  and  forms  of  the  later  fathers, 
would  that  phonography  perpetuated  their  in- 
spired flights  ;  those  of  Seymour  Coleman,  for 
instance,  at  the  Petersburgh  camp  in  1863,  elo- 
quence indescribable  !  fitted  to  wake  responses 
from  the  tongues  of  the  dead  !  Would  that 
"shocks  from  the  battery"  lived  in  the  living 
accents  of  Benjamin  Pomeroy,  and  were  not 
buried  in  the  silent  pages  of  a  printed  book  ! 
The  "amens"  of  the  prayer  book  are  all  ar- 
ranged with  studious  attention  to  that  decorous 
order  which  churchmen  worship  and  love  so  well, 
but  if  any  thing  would  provoke  a  crowd  of  kneel- 
ing, warm-hearted  christians  to  interject  "amens" 
promiscuously,  "hit  or  miss,"  it  would  be  one  of 
the  extempore  prayers,  of  forty  years  ago,  of 
Jesse  T.  Peck  or  Truman  Seymour. 


46  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

No  Abel  Stevens,  now  in  the  midst  of  a  tem- 
pest of  shouts  and  tears,  preaches  at  Eastham, 
till  they  pull  him  away  from  the  book  board  ! 
No  Francis  Hodgson,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
cultured  Philadelphia,  leaps  sheer  over  the 
breastwork  into  the  camp  meeting  straw,  in  his 
burning  passion  to  get  sinners  converted  and 
saints  sanctified  !  Camp  meeting  fervor  has  evap- 
orated. Round  Lake  is  as  decorous  as  State 
Street..  We  apologize  for  the  excesses  of  the 
fathers,  and  are  annoyed  with  a  few  chance  vocal 
"  amens"  in  the  midst  of  a  prayer  or  sermon. 
Yet,  some  of  us  have  seen  times  when  the  pew 
has  overwhelmed  the  pulpit,  when  the  shouts  of 
happy  saints  have  accomplished  results  which 
the  sermon  and  preacher  failed  to  secure. 

What  shall  we  say  of  our  ever  lengthening 
death  roll  ?  At  six  sessions,  only,  in  fifty  years 
has  the  answer  to  the  question,  "  Who  has  died 
this  year?"  been  "  None."  On  every  other  year, 
sometimes  as  high  as  seven  a  year,  the  great 
harvester  has  claimed  his  sheaves.  Memorial 
services  have  become  so  common  as  to  be  per- 
functory. Funeral  sermons  and  set  eulogies  are 
out  of  fashion,  and  formal  obituaries,  made  up 
of  dates  and  common  places,  are  the  dullest 
things 'in  literature.  The  "  In  Memoriam "  of 
the  Annual  Minutes  excites  less  interest  than  a 
newspaper  column  detailing  the  latest  crhninal 
execution. 

For  once,  if  only  once,  in  fifty  years,  let  us  put 
away  indifference,  and  the  hired  undertaker's 
ostentatious  woe,  and  ask  "  how  did  these  fellow 


SEMI  CENTENNIAL.  47 

heralds  die  ?  A  score  went  suddenly  as  if  by 
lightning  stroke.  Fifty  others  sank  into  insensi- 
bility or  struggled  with  over-mastering  pain  and 
disease,  or  confined  themselves  to  general  decla- 
rations of  soul  peace  and  readiness  to  live  or  die. 

Full  fifty  others  left  positive  dying  testimonies, 
those  which  christians  love  to  hear  so  well,  rang- 
ing all  the  way  from  the  language  of  simple  trust 
in  God  in  the  hour  of  death,  to  the  highest  ex- 
pressions of  rapture,  triumph,  victory.  What  a 
rich  legacy  to  the  church  are  these  precious  last 
words  !  The  sacraments  are  often  administered 
to  the  dying.  Methodist  preface  to  the  sacra- 
ment is  a  love  feast,  and  the  love  feast  a  wealth 
of  glorious  experiences  !  What  an  unparalleled 
love  feast  would  the  death-bed  utterances  of  the 
loved  and  lost  of  Troy  Conference  furnish  forth  ! 

Coles  Carpenter,  who  heads  the  roll  of  the 
departed,  went  breathing  forth  "  glory  !  glory  ! 
glory  !"  as  long  as  breath  lasted.  Wright  Ha- 
zen,  among  other  beautiful  things,  said  "  the 
cradle  of  death  is  fast  rocking  me  away  to  eter- 
nity— and  I  am  sure  it  rocks  easy  !"  James 
B.  Houghtaling,  secretary  of  the  conference  for 
the  first  nineteen  years  of  its  existence,  drops  his 
pen  with  the  exultant  shout  "  I  am  going  to  my 
home  in  heaven  !"  The  venerable  Elias  Vander- 
lip  is  "  pluming  his  wings  for  flight!"  The 
wretched  cripple  Ryder  breathes  out  his  soul 
with  the  gentle  aspiration  ""Jesus  !  Jesus  !"  The 
beloved  Moriarty  ejaculates,  "  Glory  to  God  ! 
all  is  well  !"  Datus  Ensign,  "  Jesus  is  precious  ! 
he  is  my  all  in  all."     The  venerable  Spicer,  un- 


48  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 

poetic  soul !  in  the  midst  of  a  night  of  excrucia- 
ting suffering  inquires,  "What  time  is  it  ?"  "  Past 
twelve."  "  Then  it  is  morning,  henceforth,  it 
shall  be  no  more,  'good  night,'  but  always  '  good 
morning.'"  Sherman  Miner  cheers  the  watchers 
by  the  entrance  of  the  dark  valley,  shouting 
as  he  enters,  "  there's  light  ahead."  James  Quin- 
lan,  "  a  flood  of  glory  fills  my  soul  !"  Halsey  W. 
Ransom,  as  he  nears  the  fanes  of  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem, cries  with  the  rapture  of  a  tired  traveler,  "  I 
see  the  city  !"  Eri  Baker  exults  "  I  never  ex- 
pected such  a  victory  !  Hallelujah  !  dying  is  a 
pleasure  !  It  pays  to  be  true  to  God  !"  Hiram 
Harris  triumphs,  "  O  the  glory  !  I  have  seen 
the  king  in  his  beauty  !"  Hiram  Chase,  at  the 
end  of  a  troubled  pilgrimage  of  seventy-six  years, 
says  "  Such  a  lighting  up  of  the  glory  of  God  in 
my  soul,  I  never  experienced  before."  The  ven- 
erable Araunah  Lyon  has  "glorious  visions  of 
Christ!  It  is  all  glorious  in  the  Lord!  Every 
thing  is  as  clear  as  light !"  Edward  Turner  had 
the  doors  of  his  sick  room  open  to  all  comers, 
that  he  might  teach  his  people  how  to  die.  "  I 
expected,"  said  he,  "  that  Christ  would  be  my 
support  when  death  approached,  but  I  had  no 
idea  that  he  would  so  fill  my  soul  with  love  and 
joy."  The  impulsive  Elisha  Watson  exultantly 
cries  "  To  God  in  the  highest,  be  glory  !"  "^An- 
gels all  in  white,"  flood  with  celestial  radiance 
the  death  chamber  of  the  youthful  Melville 
Senter,  as  he  reiterates  "  Heaven  !"  "Glory  !" 
"  Jesus  !"  "  Blessed  Lord  !"  "  O  death,  where  is 
thy  sting  !    O  grave,  where  is  thy  victory  !"    Did 


SEMI-CENTENNIAL.  49 

cherub  bands,  alter  the  fashion  toward  conquer- 
ors of  old,  unharness  the  steeds  of  fire,  and  drag 
with  their  own  hands  the  chariot  of  that  trium- 
phing spirit,  with  thunders  of  hosannah,  through 
the  gates  of  the  beautiful  city  ?  Surely,  Troy 
Conference  sustains  the  righteous  boast  long 
since  put  forth  for  Methodism,  "  our  people 
die  well." 

So  may  we  all  die  !  in  holy  confidence,  if  not 
in  exultant  rapture  ;  in  sure  and  certain  hope  of 
a  glorious  resurrection,  followed  by  the  regrets 
that  always  attend  the  departure  of  the  good  ; 
and  worthy  of  that  sublimest  eulogy  ever  pro- 
nounced over  the  coffin  of  mortal,  voiced  direct 
from  heaven,  "  blessed  are  the  dead  which  die 
in  the  Lord  !  yea,  saith  the  spirit,  that  they  may 
rest  from  their  labors  and  their  works  follow 
them." 

In  our  posthumous  influence  lies  our  true  im- 
mortality. How  long  we  shall  be  remembered 
depends  upon  the  depth  and  ineffaceableness  of 
the  impressions  we  have  made  upon  our  con- 
temporaries. No  need,  then,  of  blocks  of  gran- 
ite and  marble  over  our  graves  to  challenge  the 
inquiry  "what  mean  these  stones  !" 

In  the  young  men  before  me,  just  entering 
upon  the  second  half-century  of  Troy  Confer- 
ence existence,  1  address  possible  college  presi- 
dents, bishops,  general  conference  officials,  men 
who  will  combine  the  wisdom  of  Hedding  with 
the  holiness  of  Hamline  and  the  energy  of  Janes; 
the  silvery  eloquence  of  Fiske  and  the  lightning 
flashes  of  Durbin    with  the  learning  of   McClin- 


jo 


SEMI-CENTENNIA  L. 


tock,  and  the  sweeping  irresistibleness  of  Olin  ; 
or,  those,  on  the  other  hand,  whose  quiet  lives 
may  be  passed  in  rural  districts,  and  pioneer  la- 
bors. It  matters  not.  The  work  of  each  and  all 
will  be  felt  and  remembered.  The  death-bed 
exhortation  of  the  expiring  era  is  "  whatsoever 
thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy  might,  for 
there  is  no  work,  nor  device,  nor  knowledge,  nor 
wisdom  in  the  grave  whither  thou  goest." 

The  dates  of  the  year  1900  and  upward  will 
be  written  upon  few  of  our  tombstones.  Ours 
will  be  scattered  graves.  fne  itinerant  is  buried 
where  he  falls.  No  conspicuous  headstone 
marks  the  place  of  his  rest.  His  true  monu- 
ment will  be  the  love  and  veneration  of  saved 
souls,  comforted  human  homes  and  hearts  A 
single  ray  is  lost  in  the  effulgence  of  the  sun, 
but  it  travels  on  and  on  forever,  bearing  warmth 
and  lustre  in  its  infinite  flight.  The  glory  of  the 
individual  is  the  glory  of  the  body  of  which  he 
forms  an  integer.  Next  to  being  a  christian  is 
the  glory  of  being  a  minister  in  the  church  of 
God,  subordinate  to  that  is  the  glory  and  honor 
of  being  a  member  of  a  conference  of  the  Meth- 
odist Episcopal  Church!  We  call  on  1932  to 
show  a  century  of  work  that  shall  give  the-Troy 
Conference  a  proud  place  in  history,  entitle  it 
to  the  gratitude  of  millions,  and  the  respect  of 
mankind. 


TROY   CONFERENCE. 

INITIAL  SESSION. 

Held  in  conjunction  with  the  Vew  York  Conference^  in  New  York,  June 
6th,  /.\\v,  Elijah  Heading,  assisted  by  Robot  R.  Robots,  presiding. 

Names  marked  with  s-ar  *,  deceased  ;  t  Living  in  1882;  }  unknown. 
Superannuated,  Cyprian  H.  Gridley,*  Ibri  Cannon*. 


Charges.  Preachers.  Numbers. 

TROY  DISTRICT.  Arnold  Scholefield,  P.  E.* 5,215 

Troy Buell  Goodsell* 577 

West  Troy   Freeborn  G.  Hibbardt 80 

Albia Edwin  F.  Whiteside* 109 

Chatham  and  Nassau   Seymour  Coleman* 871 

Alden  S.  Coopert 

"     John  Peg-g* 

Pittsfield     Jarvis  Z.  Nichols* 209 

Dalton Henry  Burton* 345 

Petersburg John  M.  Weaver* 515 

"  John  G.  Barker:}: 

Hoosic  and  Bennington     Wright  Hazen* 340 

Cambridge Stephen  Remington}:   561 

Henry  Smith* 

Washington Jacob  Beeman* 574 

William  F.  Hurdt 

"  Sherman  Miner* 

Pittstown  and  Schaghticoke   . . .  Roswell  Kelly* 786 

James  Caughey+ 

...Jacob  Hall* 

Lansingburgh  and  Waterford.  .Timothy  Benedict* 243 

SARATOGA  DISTRICT.      Henry  Stead,  P.  E.* 5,842 

Albanv.  South John  B.  Stratton* 305 

Garretson Thomas  Burch* 349 

Schenectady Salmon  StebbinsJ 243 

Watervliet   Joshua  Poort 280 

Berne John  W.  DennistonJ 1,186 

Hiram  Meekert 

M     Henry  Fames* 

1 1  thnsto  >wn Samuel  Covel* 347 

William  D.  Stead* 

Spraker's  Basin   James  B.  Houghtaling* 122 

Northampton   Cyrus  Meekert 759 

Orrin  Pier* 

Samuel  Howe* 

Halfmoon   James  Quintan* 574 

William  Amer* 

Gilbert  Lyon* 

Andrew  McKean* 


52  SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 


Charges.  Preachers.  Numbers. 

Saratoga  and  Mechanicville Daniel  Brayton* 664 

"  Thomas  Newman* 

"  Datus  Ensign* 

"  "  ....  William  Anson*   

"  "  John  D.  Moriarty* 

Luzerne Henry  R.  Colemant 344 

Warren Joseph  McCreary* 560 

Sandy  Hill  and  Glen's  Falls. . .  .Coles  Carpenter* 159 

MIDDLEBURY  DISTRICT.   Tobias  Spicer,  P.  E.* 3.201 

Middiebury Peter  C.  Oakleyt 201 

Monkton Joseph  Ayrest 346 

Charlotte Joseph  Earnest 214 

Westport  and  Essex Hiram  Chase* 530 

"      Barnabas  Hitchcock* 

Ticonderoga Amos  Hazleton* 204 

Orville  Kimpton* 

Bridgport Samuel  Eighmy* x!53 

Leicester William  Ryder* 21)9 

...    John  Alley* 

Pittsford Elias  Craw  ford* 310 

Asa  C.  Hand:}: 

Wallingford Christopher  R.  Morris* 241 

Whitehall  and  Castleton Elisha  Andrews* 311 

Charles  P.  Clarke* 

Poultney Friend  W.  Smith* 105 

Granville Reuben  Wescottt 187 

PLATTSBURGH  DISTRICT,  Samuel  D.  Ferguson,  P.  E.* 4,234 

Plattsburgh Truman  Seymour* 145 

Grand  Isle  and  Alburgh Lewis  Potter*  330 

"  "       John  Fraser* 

Highgate Jacob  Leonardt 280 

Sheldon Benjamin  Marvin* . .       552 

Josiah  H.  Brown*     

Fairfield John  P.  Foster* 420 

Hiram  Knapp; 

Stowe Orris  Pier*  352 

Milton Luman  A.  Sanfordt 21? 

St.  Albans Joseph  D.  Marshall* 190 

Burlington  and  Essex Elijah  Crane* 100 

11  "     Abiathar  M.  Osbont 

Chazy  and  Champlain Ephraim  Goss* 461 

"  "         Milton  H.  Stewart* 

John  W.  B.  Woodt 

Beekmantown Joel  Squiert 247 

Peru  and  Redford Dillon  Stephens* 410 

"  "       Araunah  Lyon* 

John  W.  Belknapt 

Jay James  R.  Goodricht 435 

"   Albert  Wickware* 

Keeseville Merritt  Bates* C5 


MEMBF.RS  OF  C(  >\TEREXCE   DECEASED 


SSEL 

Coles  Carpenter March     17,  1784  [809 

Andrew  C.  Mills.    ..  .  Dec.       — ,  1807  1888 

Arnold  Schoieheld L810 

Wright  Hazen L800  1827 

Philetus  Green Julv         16,  1809  1888 

Amos  R.  Ripley 1808  1889 

Gilbert  V.  Palmer 1814  L888 

Daniel  Holmes August  24,  1802  1832 

William  D.  Stead 1799  1882 

Charles   Sherman.  .  .     Oct.         20,1808  1830 

James  Covel,  Jun Sept.  4,   L896  1816 

Thomas  Kirby Julv        28,  1815  183*3 

Alfred  Saxe Sept.  6,1814  1843 

Samuel  Eighmv 1789  1814 

Daniel  F.  Page 1835 

William   Anson 1768  1800 

Elias  Vanderlip 1764  180'_> 

William   Ryder lune        27,  1805  1881 

John  D.  Moriartv    ..     August      1,  1793  L820 

lohn  P.  Foster 1829 

John  Lindsay July         18,  1788  L809 

Chester  Lvon 1839 

Henry  Earues June       23,1774  1800 

James  F.  Burrows...  Feb.         I".  1826  L848 

Elijah  B.  Hubbard 1799  1884 

Cyrus  Bolster 1818  1845 

(  diver   Emerson L814  1834 

Datus  Ensign Oct.         16,  1783  1804 

Richard  Griffin 1828  1*49 

John  Bannard Jan.  6,  1820  1850 

Valentine  Brown  . June  6,  1806  1839 

Henry  Stead April      10,1774  L804 

fosiah  H.Brown 1810  1*32 

Harvey  S.  Smith 1820  1843 

Elijah  Chichester 1778  1835 

Jas.  B.  Houghtaiing..  Oct.  9,1797  1828 

Thomas  B.  Pearson..  Sept.       28,  1827  ls.~>" 

Samuel  Howe March     20,1780  1802 

Edward  S.  Stout Feb.        15,  L812  1833 

Stephen  Stiles         ..     Feb.        10,1800  1833 

Ahriah  H.  Seaver 1859 

Albinus  Johnson | 1823  1847 

Samuel  Covel ' 1821 

William  X.  Fraser.  .  J 1810  1836 

Dillon  Stevens April         6,  1794  1822 

Egbert  H.   Foster 1823  1845 

Christopher  R.  Morris  Jan.         26,1807  1829 

Joseph  Conner Julv  5,1810  1840 

Tobias  Spicer Nov.         7,1788  1810 

John  Haslam    1802  1838 

Jacob  Hall 179!  1816 

John  B.  Stratton 1785  1811 

Lewis  Potter Sept.       26,  1806  1830 

Andrew  M'Kean.    ...  July         28,  1777  1802 

OrrinPier March       7,1797  1819 

Sylvester  W.  Cooper.  Oct.         31,1889  186] 

Samuel  H.   Hancock  .  June        21,  1825  1849 

Sherman  Miner March     14,  1793  1815 

James  Quinlan Feb.        15.  17931  1818 

Ephraim  Goss April       15,  1794J  1829 


Died. 


\    • 


Feb. 


Nov. 

Feb. 

June 

Dec. 

Oct. 

Jan. 

March 

May 

July 

Oct. 

March 


July 

Sept. 


Feb. 

Oct. 

Sept. 

April 

April 

Feb. 

April 


July 

May 

Sept. 

Oct. 

Jan. 

April 

Aug. 


Nov. 
Feb. 
Aug. 
Aug. 
Oct. 
March 


Oct. 

Jan. 
Feb. 
May 

Dec. 

Nov. 

Feb. 

April 

June 

Julv 

Dec. 

Oct. 

Nov. 

April 

Feb. 

Aug. 

I  Nov. 


17,  L834    50 

...    18 

..  .    1887     . . 

12,  L8J 

10,  1840    31 

17,  L842    ::i 

81,  1842    28 

5,  1843     M 

6,  1844  15 
10,  1844  ll 
15,  1845  19 
10,  1846    31 

8,  1846    32 

1,  1847  60 
...1848 

17,  1848    80 
:;,   18 

.. .   1849     t I 

18,  1849    56 
...   1849 
20,  I860 

19,  L850 
6,  1851 

2,  1852 


22,  1852 

17,  1853 

22,  1853 

. . .  1853 

1.  1853 

11,  1854 

24,  1S54 


62 


77 
26 
53 
35 
39 
70 
30 
:;i 
48 


18,  1854  80 


7,  1855 

8,  1855 
21,  1855 
...  1857 

IS,  1851 

16,  L858 

3,  1859 

24,  1859 

— .  1858 

2,  I860 

...  I860 

19,  I860 

10,  L861 

14,  ISO: 

11.  L861 
27,  1861 
13,  L862 
::,   L863 

19,  1863 

20,  L863 

15,  L863  57 
19,  1863  86 
10,  1864  67 
23,  1864 

5,  L865 
10,  1860 
19,  1866 

6,  1866 


46 
35 
77 
60 
3ii 
> 

i; 

59 

37 

50 
67 

54 
51 
74 
60 
69 
> 


Names. 

Born. 

Entered 
Conf'nce 

Died. 

Age. 

Halsey  W.  Ransom. 

..    1811 

1848 

March 

26, 

1867 

~56~ 

Jacob  Beeman 

March 

12,  1780 

1809 

Feb. 

15, 

1868 

88 

Alpheus  Wade 

June 

14,  1801 

1838 

July 

26, 

1868 

67 

Norris  Mihill 

.    .    1823 
15,  1795 

1866 
1823 

Oct. 
April 

3, 

0 

1868 
1869 

45 

Stephen  L.  Stillman. 

April 

74 

Isaac  Parks 

Sept. 

6,  1803 

1834 

April 

is! 

1869 

66 

David  W.  Gould. . .  . 

. . .    1824 

1850 

May 

5, 

1869 

45 

Merritt  Bates 

July 

12,  1806 

1827 

Aug. 

23, 

1869 

63 

David  Lytle 

Oct. 

31,  1826 

1855 

Oct. 

13, 

1869 

43 

Ensign  Stover 

May 

15,  1815 

1839 

May 

8, 

1871 

56 

William  R.  Brown .  . 

March 

7,  1828 

1850 

June 

8, 

1871 

43 

Eri  Baker 

...    1833 

1866 

Feb. 

18, 

1872 

39 

Bennett  Eaton. 

Dec. 

31,  1806 

1850 

March 

7, 

1872 

65 

Hiram  Harris 

July 

19,  1824 

1852 

1872 

48 

John  M.  Weaver 

July 

5,  1792 

1829 

May 

12, 

1872 

80 

Albert  Champlin  . .  . 

Dec. 

3,  1809 

1834 

June 

18, 

1872 

61 

Henry  A.  Warren  .  . 

March 

30,  1839 

1870 

June 

29, 

1872 

34 

Cyprian  H.  Gridley. 

...   1787 

1808 

Aug. 

28, 

1872 

85 

Berea  O.  Meeker  .  . . 

May 

13,  1816 

1838 

Jan. 

3, 

1873 

56 

Asaph  Shurtliff 

...1802 

1853 

Feb. 

3, 

1873 

71 

Paul  P.  Atwell 

March 

28,  1801 

1843 

June 

13, 

1873 

72 

Jas.  H.  Patterson. . . 

March 

16,  1810 

1833 

Dec. 

24, 

1873 

63 

Samuel  Young..    .    . 

March 

22,  1794 

1833 

Jan. 

26, 

1874 

80 

Alvin  Robbins 

July 

5,  1816 

1841 

April 

10, 

1874 

58 

Alanson  W.  Garvin. 

April 

14,  1813 

1843 

June 

19, 

1874 

61 

Sylvester  P.Williams 

April 

16,  1809 

1831 

Sept. 

14, 

1874 

65 

Miltcn  H.  Stewart. . 

1831 
1839 

80 

Alfred  A.  Farr 

Aug. 



29,  1810 

Nov. 

4, 

1874 

64 

Truman  Seymour. . . 

Jan. 

25,  1799 

1829 

Nov. 

15, 

1874 

75 

William  C.  Butcher. 

Oct. 

30,  1841 

1869 

Dec. 

14, 

1874 

33 

Alexander  Dixon.  . . 

June 

9,  1799 

1836 

April 

12, 

1875 

76 

Chester  Chamberlain 

Jan. 

19,  1807 

1834 

July 
Sept. 

30, 

1875 

68 

John  F.  Crowl 

..  .   1824 

1843 

14, 

1875 

51 

Bernice  D.  Ames.  . . 

Dec. 

26,  1827 

1857 

Jan. 

5, 

1876 

4s 

Melville  A.  Senter 

March 

24,  1847 

1867 

Feb. 

1, 

1876 

29 

Hiram  Dunn 

Feb. 

5,  1812 

1836 

March 

1, 

1876 

64 

Araunah  Lyon 

Oct. 

24,  1804 

1831 

Nov. 

6, 

1876 

72 

Newton  B.  Wood.  . . 

Nov. 

8,  1814 

1840 

Dec. 

8, 

1876 

62 

Hiram  Chase 

Feb. 

1,  1801 

1827 

Jan. 

9, 

1877 

76 

Seymour  Coleman . . 

Dec. 

23,  1794 

1828 

Jan. 

23, 

is; ; 

82 

George  S.  Gold   .... 

Nov. 

11,  1813 

1841 

Feb. 

21, 

1878 

65 

Charles  C.  Gilbert.  . 

1843 
1817 

March 
May 

13, 
6, 

1878 
1878 

Timothy  Benedict  .  . 

May 

25,  1795 

83 

John  L.  Cook 

Jan. 

7,  1819 

1846 

May 

15, 

1878 

59 

John  Thompson.  . .  . 

Aug. 

20,  1800 

1840 

July 

9, 

1878 

7S 

William  W.  Atwater 

Feb. 

15,  1814 

1842 

Aug. 
Nov. 

3, 

1878 

64 

Edward  Turner. .    .  . 

June 

23,  1832 

1858 

30, 

1878 

46 

Elisha  Watson 

Feb. 

15,  1822 

1846 

Jan. 

11, 

1879 

57 

Matthias  Ludlam .  .  . 



1843 

March 

19, 

1879 

60 

Ward  Bullard 

Feb." 

8,  1810 

1838 

May 

21, 

1879 

69 

John  Pegg 

...    1800 

1832 

Aug. 

26, 

1S79 

7!) 

Benjamin  Pomeroy. 

. .  .    1806 

1835 

May 

Aug. 

12, 

1880 

74 

Warren  B.  Osgood. . 

Feb." ' 

5,  1844 

1868 

17, 

1880 

36 

Benjamin  S.  Sharp. . 

Oct. 

11,  1834 

1858 

Nov. 

1, 

1880 

46 

George  J.  Brown.  . . 

Nov. 

12,  1839 

1868 

Dec. 

1, 

1880 

41 

William  Bedell 

Nov. 

25,  1820 

1848 

Jan. 

27, 

1881 

60 

Chas.  B.  Armstrong. 

Oct. 

14,  1848 

1872 

May 

13 

1881 

33 

Henry  Smith 

June 

30,  1803 

1832 

May 

18, 

1881 

78 

Charles  H.  Leonard 

1836 

May 

24, 

1881 

69 

Joshua  Poor 

Dec. 

31,  1797 

1825 

Nov. 

28, 

1F81 

1  84 

CONFERENCE    SESSIONS. 


8 


Presiding  Bishop. 


1  August 

2  August 
:;  Augusl 

4  June 

5  May 

6  June 

7  June 

8  June 

'.i  June- 
Id  June 

I  1   May 

L2  June 
18  May 


May 
May 
June 
May 
May- 
May 
June 
ljMay 
22  May 
28  May 
24  June 
26  May 
26  May 
21  May 

28  April 

29  April 

30  April 
:;i  April 
82  March 
88  April 
84  April 
36  April 

36  April 

37  April 
W  April 

39  April 

40  March 
-II  April 

42  April 

43  April 

44  April 
1.')  April 

46  April 

47  April 

48  March 

49  April 

50  April 


28, 

•J  7. 

26, 

22 

8l] 

6, 

■">, 

17. 

2 

r. 

21, 
L9, 

7. 
•-'7, 
26, 
1  1, 
80, 
29, 
21, 
16, 
11, 
1". 

9, 
L8, 
20, 
18, 
is, 
11. 
17, 
16, 
16, 
80, 

5, 
18, 
17, 

8, 
1  1. 
28, 
12, 
-'7, 
24 , 
16, 
21, 
L2, 
is, 
IT, 
28, 
81, 
20, 
19, 


L888  1  roy,  \.  V 

1884  Plattsburgh,  N.  Y. 

L836  Albany,  X.  V 

L836  Pawlet,  Vt 

1887  Troy,  N.  Y 

L888  Keeseville,  X.  V.  . 
L889  Schenectady,  X.  V 
is m  Middlebury,  Vt  .  . 

IS  11  Albany.  X.   Y 

L842  Burlington,  Vt .  .  . 

L843  Troy.  X.  Y 

1844 

1846 

L846 

1S47 

1848 

L849 


West  Poultney,  Vt 

Schenectady,    X.  V. 

Keeseville,  N.  Y.  .  . 

Albany,  N.  Y 

Troy,  X.  Y 

Sandy  Hill,  N.  Y... 

1850  Saratoga,  N.  Y 

1851 1  North  Adams,  Mass 
L862  Plattsburgh,  N.  Y.. 
1853|Schenectady,   X.  Y. 

1854' Albany.  N.  Y 

1855|Troy,  N.  Y 

1856: Burlington,  Yt 

1867  Pittsfield,  Mass 

1858|Middlebury,   Vt. . . 

1859 

I860 

L861 

1862 

1863 


Saratoga,  X.  Y.  .  .  . 

Lansingburgh,  N.  Y 

Albany,  N.  Y 

Troy,  N.  Y 

Fort  Edward,  N.  Y. 
L864  Amsterdam,  N.  Y.  . 
1866  Plattsburgh,   tf.  Y   . 

1866  Cambridge,  X.  V.. 

1867  Pittsfield,   Mass.  .  .  . 

1868  Albany,  X.  Y 

L869  West  Troy,  N.  Y... 

1870  Burlington,  Yt. 

1871  Trov,  X.  Y.  ... 
L872  Saratoga,  X.  Y 
1873  Gloversville,  N, 
1  s7  1  Schenectady,  N 

1875  Glen's  Falls.  N. 

1876  Albany.  N.  Y    ... 

1877  Plattsburgh,  N.  Y 

1878  Lansingburgh,  N. 

1879  Bennington.  Yt.  . 

1880  Burlington,  Vt.  .  . 

1881  Glen's  Falls,  N.  Y 

1882  Trov,  X.  Y 


Y. 
Y. 
Y. 


Bishop 


,, 


" 
"  G 


I  redding 

Hedding 

Emory 

Waugh 

I  [«  dding 

Morris 

1  [edding 

Roberts 

Soule 

Hedding 

Waugh 

Hamlin 

Hedding 

Janes 

Morris 

Hamlin 

Hamlin 

Morris 

Janes 

Janes 

Waugh 

Janes 

Simpson 

Morris 

Baker 

Ames 

Janes 

Baker 

Ames 

Scott 

Baker 

Simpson 

Kingsley 

Janes 

Clark 

Scott 

Kingsley 

Ames 

Scott 

Janes 

Peck 

Foster 

Ames 

Scott 

Foster 

Haven 

Harris 

Peck 

Wiley 

Simpson 


GENERAL  CONFERENCE  DELEGATES. 


Twelve  Quadrennial  General  Conferences  have  occurred  in  fifty 
years,  to  which  the  Troy  Annual  Conference  has  sent  the  following 
clerical  delegates  :  Timothy  Benedict,  1848  and  '52  ;  John  E. 
Bowen,  1868  ;  Stephen  D.  Brown,  1852,  '56,  '64  ;  William  R.  Brown, 
1868  ;  Chester  F.  Burdick,  1872  ;  John  Clarke,  1848  and  '52  ;  Seymour 
Coleman,  1844;  James  Covel,  1844;  Hiram  Dunn,  i860;  Joel  W. 
Eaton,  1876  ;  Homer  Eaton,  1872  and  '80  ;  Samuel  D.  Ferguson,  1836  ; 
John  Frazer,  1848  and  '52 ;  Buel  Goodsell,  1836  ;  Ephraim  Goss, 
i860  ;  Oren  Gregg,  1864  ;  William  Griffin,  1856,  '60,  '64  ;  Thomas 
A.  Grifnin,  1876  ;  Barnes  M.  Hall.  1848,  '52,  '56  ;  Peter  P.  Harrower, 
i860  ;  Bostwick  Hawley,  1864  ;  James  B.  Houghtaling,  1840  and  '44  ; 
William  H.  Hughes,  1880  ;  David  P.  Hulburd,  1856  and  '60  ;  Joseph 
E.  King,  1864 ;  Noah  Levings,  1836  and  '40  ;  Lorenzo  Marshall, 
Samuel  McKean,  1880  ;  Merritt  B.  Mead,  1S72  ;  Samuel  Meredith, 
1868  and  '72  ;  Sherman  Miner,  1836  and  40  ;  John  Newman,  i860  ; 
Peter  C.  Oakley,  1S36  ;  Stephen  Parks,  1856  ;  Jesse  T.  Peck,  1S44, 
'48  and  '68  ;  Zebulon  Phillips,  1852  and  '56  ;  Rodman  H.  Robinson, 
1868 ;  Hiram  C.  Sexton,  1872  ;  Truman  Seymour,  1840  and  '44  ; 
Charles  Sherman,  1836  and  '40  ;  Tobias  Spicer,  1836,  40,  '44,  48  ; 
Desevignia  Starks,  1852,  '6o,  '64  ;  Henry  L.  Starks,  1856  and '6o  ;  Jno. 
W.  Thompson,  1880  ;  Sanford  Washburn,  1856  and  '72  ;  Elisha  Wat- 
son, 1872  ;  John  M.  Weaver,  1844  and  48  ;  John  M.  Webster,  1S76 
and  '80;  Reuben  Wescott,  1852;  Erastus  Wentworth,  1868,  '72,  '76; 
Andrew  Witherspoon,  1848,  '52,  '56,  '60.  '72. 

Lay  Delegates — William  Wells,  1872,  '76  ;  Hiram  A.Wilson,  1872  ; 
George  L.  Clarke,  1876  ;  Henry  M.  Seely  and  Joseph  Hillman,  1880. 
A  superannuate  of  the  New  York  Conference,  Nathaniel  Kellogg, 
says  in  a  recent  letter,  "let  me  give  you  a  specimen  of  an  old  fash- 
ioned estimate  for  the  keeping  of  a  young  aspirant  to  a  city  pulpit  " 
in  a  charge  which  now  probably  pays  its  pastor  a  salary  of  $3,000. 

"  At  a  meeting  of  the  official  members  of  the  station,  it  was  pro- 
posed to  raise  for  the  support  of  our  beloved  preacher  for  the  current 
year,  four  hundred  dollars,  estimated  as  follows  :  " 

Flour,  including  other  bread  stuffs $30  00 

Beef  and  pork  (salted),  fish  and  fresh  meat 40  00 

Butter  and  cheese  12  00 

Sugar,  molasses,  tea  an  J  coffee 10  00 

Oil  and  candles 7  00 

Pepper,  Alsoice,  salt  an.l  ginger 8  50 

Milk  bill 9  00 

Preserves 2  00 

Wood 36  00 

Add  for  incidentals   10  50 

Disciplinary  allowance  self  and  wife 200  00 

Two  children 35  00 

Total  $400  00 

"  Voted  that  this  be  allowed  the  preacher,  provided  we  can  raise  it  !" 


COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY   LIBRARIES 

This  book  is  due  on  the  date  indicated  below,  or  at  the 
expiration  of  a  definite  period  after  the  date  of  borrowing,  as 
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the  Librarian  in  charge. 

DATE  BORROWED 

DATE  DUE 

DATE  BORROWED 

DATE  DUE 

C28(ll49)  lOOM 

GAYLAMOUNT 
PAMPHLET   BINDER 

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Syf»cui«,  N.  V. 

S*octt»n,  C.lif. 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 


' 


938.6 
tworth 


/.438 


7.r488 


First  half  century  of  the  life  and 
v/ori:  of  the  Irov  conference.... 


BRnUEDOKOl 

PHOTOCOPY 


